The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the Emergence of the MOLDOVAN Nation

8/7/2019 The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the Emergence of the MOLDOVAN Nation

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ISSN 2029-0225

THE MOLOTOV-RIBBENTROP PACT AND THE

EMERGENCE OF THE MOLODOVAN NATION:

REFLECTIONS AFTER 70 YEARS*

OCTAVIAN D. TICU

Doctor, director, Institute of History and political science.Free Moldova University

[email protected]

Te MolotovRibbentrop Pact led to the Soviet annexation o Bessarabia rom Romania.Immediately afer the Soviet occupation, Bessarabia was to be joined to the Moldovan

ASSR, and become the Moldovan SSR under control o Moscow and the Soviet Union hadcreated or the Romanians rom Bessarabia (intentionally presented as Moldovans) a ter-ritorial nation Te present paper aims explicitly to analyze the Moldovan nation building

policies during the Soviet period and the complexity o consequences which derived romSoviet occupation or the sense o Romanian identity in Bessarabia.

Key words: MolotovRibbentrop Pact, Soviet Union, Romania, Moldovenism,Nation-Building, Bessarabia.

NTRODUCTION

Te MolotovRibbentrop Pact, signed in Moscow in the early hours o24 August 1939 (but dated 23 August),included a secret protocol di-

viding Northern and Eastern Europe into German and Soviet sphereso infuence, anticipating potential territorial and political rearrange-ments o these countries. Tereaer, Germany and the Soviet Unioninvaded their respective sides o Poland, dividing the country between

them. Part o eastern Finland was annexed by the Soviet Union aer


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an attempted invasion. Tis was ollowed by Soviet annexations o Es-tonia, Latvia, Lithuania and eastern and northern Romania. On 26

June 1940, our days aer France sued or an armistice with the TirdReich, the Soviet Union issued an ultimatum demanding Bessarabiaand, unexpectedly, Northern Bukovina rom Romania. wo days later,the Romanians caved to the Soviet demands and the Soviets occu-pied the territory. Te Hertza region was initially not requested by theUSSR but was later occupied by orce aer the Romanians agreed tothe initial Soviet demands.

Immediately aer the annexation, Bessarabia was to be joined to

the Moldovan ASSR, and become the Moldovan SSR under control oMoscow and the Soviet Union had created or the Romanians romBessarabia (intentionally presented as Moldovans), a territorial nationwith is own state apparatus and ruling elite which had the symbolso any sovereign state, with a national fag and seal, but without realsovereignty or the right to ull political expression1. In this sense, theimagined community o the Moldovans or the rst time took theorm o physical and political meaning aer June 1940.

According to the scholars on ethnicity and nationalism, a rangeo actors like nostalgia or past lie-styles, imperial mytho-moteurs,and language ssures create shiing ethnic identities2. Tis seems tobe the argument in the case o the Republic o Moldova, once a Ro-manian land, annexed by the Soviet Union aer the concluding o theMolotov-Ribbentrop pact. Despite the contentions o the Romaniangovernment that the Moldovans are Romanians and their languagea Romanian dialect, the Soviets orged a distinct national identity or

the Moldovans3

, declaring them a separate nation and granting themunion republic status.Even i aer the all o the Soviet Union many people expected

the (re)union o Romania with Moldova, ollowing the German patho unication, the Republic o Moldova insisted in stressing its ownidentity. In this sense it was only the demise o the Soviet Union thatallowed the Moldovans to enjoy this real sovereignty and the right toull political expression, and to proceed into the state/nation building.

Aer achieving independence in 1991, national elites proceeded with


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THE MOLOTOV-RIBBENTROP PACT AND THE EMERGENCE OF T HE MOLODOVAN NATION:

REFLECTIONS AFTER 70 YEARS

the consolidation o the Moldovan political and national identity imi-tating the old principle we created Moldova now we need to create

the Moldovans.Te present paper aims explicitly to analyze the Moldovan nationbuilding policies during the Soviet period and the complexity o con-sequences which derived rom Soviet occupation or the sense o Ro-manian identity in Bessarabia.

WHAT WAS THE SOVIET MOLDOVENISM?

Moldova was a part o the Soviet Union or almost 50 years, the rststate in history to be ormed o ethnic political units, which conront-ing the growing o nationalisms by systematically promoting the na-tional consciousness o its nationalities and by creating or many othem the institutional orms specic to the nation-states4. Te logicand the content o the Soviet nation-building policy were pointed outelsewhere and as is widely accepted that it was mainly ocused on ourattributes o the national orms: creation o the national territories;

linguistic indigenization; creation and promotion o the native elites;and the supporting o the national culture5.In spite o the similarities in the implementation o the nation-

alities policy across the Soviet state, we should admit that there wasa sensible dierence between the policy o indigenization ollowedduring the interwar period toward the non-Russian nationalities andthat o the postwar in the new acquired territories o the Baltic States,Western Ukraine, Belorussia, and the new created Moldovan SSR.

Since all these territories knew previously either independence orother orms o state/nation building which strengthened the sense otheir identity, they conronted an opposing orce in the Soviet policyo nationalities. In their case rom the very beginning it was about de-stroying rather than constructing, as was largely the case in the Sovietrepublics during 1920s, aer which the stages o their indigenizationwas ocused on their sovereignty rather than on identity modeling.

Te case o the Moldovan SSR was exceptional rom the western

Soviet pattern in that Soviet Armative Action aimed to create a nation


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whose sense o nation-ness had barely existed beore, except in the senseo regionalism within the Russia Empire or Greater Romania to which

the territory belonged previously. At this point the case o Moldova wasmore similar to that o the republics o Central Asia at the beginning othe policy o indigenization in the 1920s6 and it was distinct rom theother republics o the western part o the Soviet Union, which had astrong sense o identity. In other words, the ingredients o the policy oindigenization like the creation o the national territory, linguistic indi-genization, the orging o the elites and the national culture, invoked bythe scholars in the Soviet nationbuilding policies, were promoted in

the Soviet Moldova case in order to stress the Moldovan primordial-ism and its distinctiveness rom the Romanian one.In this case, according to George Schopfins pattern,7 we deal with

the Baltics or instance as with traditional societies, which despitethe Soviet experiences, preserved what they could rom the past, butchanged in unperceived ways as well during the Soviet period, whileMoldova was a society brought in being by the Soviet Union, whichowe to the Soviet nation building policy its physical creation, political

status and even ethnic identity. Here, Soviet social engineering hadgone so ar as to create by at a language and an ethic group to justiythe eponymous polity and deend it against possible claims by Roma-nia, to which it belonged between the wars. Adapting erry Martinsassertion, the Soviet Union inherited a conused Moldovan ethnicityand tried to transorm it into a nation-state8.

Since Soviet era boundaries are the main oundation on which thenewly independent Moldova has to build its new political and nation

identity, an analysis o the eect o the Soviet policy o nationalities inthe Moldovan SSR would be very helpul or understanding currentrealities in the Republic o Moldova.

HISTORICAL BOUNDARIES SOVIET BOUNDARIES

Te Soviet understanding o nationhood was rmly based on the Sta-linist linkage between nationality, its territory and its indigenous po-

litical elite. It is a well known act as well that ollowing Stalins own


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denition o nation, Soviet authorities promoted an idea o nation asbeing xed to territory. Te major ethnic groups were assigned their

ocially recognized territories and organized into an elaborate ad-ministrative hierarchy o ethnic stratication, in which the een So-viet republics represented the highest rank o statehood accessible toa Soviet nationality9.

Even though scholars o Soviet nationalities assert that the Pied-mont principle was not a major Soviet motivation in policies o na-tion-building, they admits that in a single exceptional case o theMoldovan Autonomous SSR this principle was the main reason or

the creation o a Soviet republic

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.Since the Soviet Union never admitted the annexation o Bessara-bia to Romania, the Soviets created great pressure on the Romanianauthorities through the organization, training, and nancing o sub-

versive action in Bessarabia. Tis pressure implicated the creation oMoldovan ASSR inside Ukrainian SSR in 1924, in what V. Zatonskywas calling our own Moldovan Piedmont11. Despite the small sizeand the dubious Moldovan ethnic character12, the newly created re-

public received the status o an autonomous republic because o theuture political perspectives o Moldova, i.e. the eventual annexationo Bessarabia. For the same reason, despite the protest o the Roma-nian communists, in the Moldovan ASSR was initiated the orging oa distinct Moldovan literary language and the cultivation o separateMoldovan national identity.13

Te Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic was created by the Su-preme Soviet o the USSR on August 2, 1940, allegedly on the initia-

tive o the majority working people o the region14

. Roughly speak-ing the creation o the Moldovan SSR was the result o the joiningtogether o historical Bessarabia and the Moldovan ASSR, but not intheir integrity.

As usual the Soviets did not ollow any ethnic, historic or culturallogic in the creation o the new republic but only strategic considera-tions. As a result three counties o historical Bessarabia (Cetatea Alba,Ismail and Hotin), were annexed to Ukrainian SSR in exchange or

parts o the Moldovan ASSR15

. Beside the idea o destroying o the


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compactness o the historical integrity o Bessarabia, the Soviet o-cials strategies pursued to secure the Soviet Unions (through a reliable

Slavic republic) access to the Danube River and made the MoldovanSSR a landlocked entity. We can not deny in judging that policy thepressure o the Ukrainians communist ocials both in the terms othe Soviet ultimatum concerning Bessarabia16 and that o the Pied-mont Principle17. Te act remains that with the new borders the dis-puted territory between the Dnester and the Prut, Bessarabia ceasedto be a single unit precisely because it was expected that this wouldcomplicate any uture attempt to have the area returned to Romania.

In long lasting terms the unication o these two distinct enti-ties (known as Bessarabia and ransnistria, or the le bank andright bank o the Dnestr river), which never existed beore in anysense as a common entity, was ateul or the urther evolution botho the Moldovan SSR and the Republic o Moldova. Economicallyand demographically speaking, Soviet Moldova gradually developedas two republics in one: a largely rural, agricultural and indigenousMoldovan, and a more urban, Slavic, and generally immigrant popu-

lation in ransnistria working in Soviet-style heavy industry18

. Mosto the Moldovan industry worked out as an appendix o the great So- viet enterprises or were located outside Bessarabia in ransnistria,which was producing 1/3 o the Moldovan industrial output. Besidesthe inherent distortion o the ethnic balance in the Moldovan SSR,that peculiar Soviet policy has generated the long-lasting premises outure ransnistrian separation. In the terms o elites competition, theSoviet Union never trusted the Moldovans rom Bessarabia and gen-

erally relied on ocials rom ransnistria both during 1940-1941 andas well aer 1944. As a result we can attest the predominance o the el-ements rom ransnistria both in the positions o political power andpolitics o culture up to the beginning o the 1980s. Tis dominancestrengthened the sense o Moldovenism based on the blurred sense oidentity o the ransnistrians19 and the promotion o their policy oMoldovan language in 1940-1941 and the 1950s.

Regarding to the creation o the Moldovan SSR, the rst manies-

tation o Moldovan patriotism rom the local communist elites was


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attested in February 1946 when the secretaries o the Central Com-mittee o the Communist Party o Moldova N. Coval and N. Salagor

and the Head o the Supreme Soviet o the Moldovan SSR F. Brovkoaddressed Stalin a letter against the annexation o the three countiesto Ukrainian SSR by invoking historical, economic, linguistic and cul-tural arguments. Te demand remained on paper, however20.

Tere is the evidence that among the Moldovan elites existedat that moment the idea o the creation o an unied Soviet state othe Moldovans including the territories o historical Moldova up tothe Carpathians and including Bukovina with Cernauti, i.e parts o

Romania and the Ukrainian SSR

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. Te idea o Greater Moldovawas to support both the legitimization o the Bessarabia annexationrom Romania and the justication o using the symbolic markerso Moldovan Soviet primordialism, shared also by Romania. Ironi-cally, the idea o Greater Moldova reappeared aer the Republic oMoldova achieved independence, but this time it was pushed aheadby Chisinau in order to prevent the eventual Romanian pretensionstoward the Romanian character o the country.

Nevertheless the most important act is that the Soviet Union hadcreated or the Moldovans, as Ronald G. Suny has argued or otherSoviet republics, a territorial nation with is own state apparatus andruling elite which had the symbols o any sovereign state, with a na-tional fag and seal, but without real sovereignty or the right to ullpolitical expression22. In this sense, the imagined community o theMoldovans or the rst time took the orm o physical and politicalmeaning.

THE POLICIES OF LANGUAGE

Indigenization, encouraged by Lenin and supported by Stalin, andnever ocially rejected until the end o the Soviet Union, contrib-uted to the consolidation o the Soviet nationalities in three importantways: by supporting the native language, by creating a national intel-ligentsia and a political elite, and by ormally institutionalizing ethnic-

ity in the state apparatus.


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From all o the criteria used by Stalin in his classical denition onthe nation23 the question o language was a crucial one both in terms

o Armative Action and o the Soviet ideology as a whole. In the rstsense, as Stalin said a minority is discontented not because there isno national union but because it does not have the right to use its na-tive language. Allow it to use its native language and the discontent willdisappeared by itsel24. Secondly, he suggested expressly that the nativelanguage would help Soviet ideology to be better understood among thenon-Russian nationalities, while native elites, by being relative to thenative populations liestyle and customs , would help the Soviet rule to

seem as indigene and not as Russian imperial, imposed rom outside

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.Te orging o the Moldovan language started aer the creationo the Moldovan ASSR and that was the primary issues addressed bylocal elites o the newly created republic26. Despite the existence oa Moldovan dialect (close to the Moldovan regional language varia-tion in Romania) in Bessarabia both during the Russian empire andGreater Romania, it was or the rst time when these dierencesserved political purposes. Te logic o Moldovan language engineer-

ing within the Moldovan ASSR subscribed to the general meaning othe Piedmont Principle, i.e. using o the trans-border ethnic ties orinfuencing the policy o Romania, but at the same time, taking inconsideration the policy ollowed by the Soviet Union aer the an-nexation o Bessarabia, it also had ar-reaching aims in the projectiono Moldovan identity. Aer creation o the Moldovan SSR in 1940 andespecially aer 1944, the modeling o the Soviet Moldovan languageheavily laid on the language experiments developed during the exist-

ence o the Moldovan Autonomous Republic.Tat the creation o the Moldovan language was the most impor-tant o the ingredients using or inventing the Moldovans becameclear soon aer the establishment o the Moldovan SSR in 1940. Forinstance, between July and December 1940, 138 books were publishedin 1.5 million copies, among which 1.2 million in the Moldovan lan-guage. From June 1940 till June 1941 in Moldovan SSR, 56 newspapersand 3 magazines existed which were published in 205,000 copies27. All

these publications used a russied dialect o the Moldovan language,


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developed during the existence o the Moldovan ASSR, in order tomake the Soviet ideology accessible to the Moldovans, among whom

rate o literacy was very low

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. During that period the Soviet authori-ties still continued to use the Latin alphabet. Te switch to the Cyrillicwas planned or the summer o 1941 but made impossible because othe outbreak o war29.

Because o the brieness o the 19401941 period, Soviet nationbuilders were not able to implement the decisive measures o SovietArmative Action, i.e. the consolidation o the Moldovan nation,distinct rom the Romanian one. But the harsh Soviet policies re-

garding language, the elites, and politics o culture anticipated, andin many aspects acilitated, the construction o Moldovan identityinside the Soviet Union aer the Second World War.

In this sense the policy o language in the Moldovan SSR rom1944 until 1989 was distinct rom that promoted in the MoldovanASSR rom 1924 until 1940 and contrasted mostly rom the languagepolicy ollowed by the Soviet Union among its western nationalities.From this point o view its aim was three-pronged: indigenization in

the sense o Armative Action, in the ideological sense as a means oindoctrinating Moldovans to communist values and most importantor insulating a distinct Moldovan identity against any possible claimsrom Romania.

Indeed the creation o the new identity was build around the ideao a distinct language, based mostly on the Moldovan dialect and ex-cluding the literary norms o the Romanian language. Aer the Sec-ond World War the Latin alphabet was orbidden in Moldova and re-

placed by the Cyrillic, which was considered more appropriate to thelanguage o the Moldovans. In this sense Soviet ideology insisted onthe idea that the transition to the Cyrillic alphabet did not involve thesubordination to Russian culture but was the most acceptable and ra-tional orm or the development o national culture, an act o riend-ship toward the Russian people and proo o the internationalist unityo the Soviet people30.

Aer Stalins death there was a rehabilitation o the Romanian

language in the Moldovan SSR31

and aer long debates in the middle


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o the 1950s the ocials o the Moldovan Communist Party wereconvinced that it was imperious to renounce to some archaic and

even grotesque norms o the Moldovan language imposed duringthe Stalinist period rom ransnistria. In the end the new norms oMoldovan grammar adopted in 1957 conceded generally with thenorms o the Romanian language32. Also, some o the remarkablepersonalities o Romanian culture and literature considered beoreas being a part o the Moldovan bourgeois nation were partiallyrehabilitated33. At the same time were published many works o theclassics o Romanian literature, excluding the word Romanian and

replacing some Romanian words with some Moldovan regionalismsor archaisms34.Te rehabilitation o the Romanian character o the Moldovan

language in 1950 changed sensibly the policy o language and its sta-tus. By imposing a literary standard on the Moldovan language com-patible to the Romanian one, the ransnistrian dialect was rejectedas a literary norm or the Moldovan language, as was the impact oransnistrian intellectuals on language policy. At the same time it was

an indirect admission o the compatibility between the Moldovanand Romanian languages, a act declared openly by Emilian Bukovat the Congress o Writers in Bucharest in 1956 when he said thatthe Moldovan and Romanian literary language were the same35. Tisperiod was a good opportunity or the survival o pro-Romanian eel-ings through the Soviet era: the young exponents o that period werethe elites that initiated the language revival in the late 1980s.

Beginning with the rehabilitation, the partial reprinting o the

classics o Romanian literature and the introduction o this heritage inschool programs avoided the peril o the imminent demise o Roma-nian language in the Moldovan SSR36.

Symptomatic nevertheless or the times to come aer independ-ence, the emergence o the so-called Moldovan stream both in polit-ical and cultural terms whose raison detre was to riposte against thosewho reject the existence o the Moldovan language and identity, wason the rise37. Aer the Stalinist period these elements were preeren-

tially acceded to the unctions o power in the political and cultural


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hierarchy in the Moldovan SSR and promoted the policy o languageand culture up to the beginning o Perestroika.

From that moment could be seen the emergence o the dichotomyon the elite level in Moldova: the Moldovan Soviet ocials againstintellectuals and the Moldovans intellectual elite against the new-emerged Romanian one. In nal terms this dichotomy survivedthe moment o the language mobilization in the 1989-1990 but reap-peared into new orm in independent Moldova that conormed to thesame stance o the Moldovan/Romanian conrontation.

FORGING THE SOVIET MOLDOVAN ELITES

Te creation o the native elites and their promotion into positionso leadership in the party, government, economic and/or educationalestablishments was an indispensable element o indigenization andas in the case o language, the orging o the Moldovan elite started inthe Moldovan ASSR. Even though the indigenization o the apparatuswas never a genuine success in the Moldovan ASSR38, its realization

was very useul or the Soviet nation-builders in the aermath o theormation o the Moldovan SSR. Mainly the Moldovan elements romransnistria alongside with the Russian ocials appointed rom Mos-cow were the element o the party apparatus that promoted the Sovietnationality policies in the Moldovan SSR. As a whole, these elementsenjoyed an almost cast-like dominance over public lie in Moldova inthe Soviet period, reinorced by the low level o education within theMoldovan population, the dominance o Russian and Russied cadres

in most major institutions and near-universal use o Russian as thelanguage o ocial business in the republic39.

As in the case o the other western Soviet nationalities, the orgingo the native elites was incrusted in the pattern destroying the old...building the new. At this point, one o the most consistent and harshSoviet policies o de-nationalization ollowed in the new annexed ter-ritories as a result o the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact: the elimination oelements considered o being unreliable by the Soviet leaders both in

terms o the Armative Action and o the security o the Soviet state


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on the western borderland. According to the decision o the Sovietocials on June 13-14, 1941, the operations or the extraction o the

anti-Soviet and counterrevolutionary elements rom the newly an-nexed territories, i.e. Bessarabia, the Baltic States, Western Ukraineand Western Belorussia, were xed40. Igor Casu estimates that the to-tal number aected by the Soviet policy o deportation, arrest and ex-ecution rom Bessarabia and the Northern Bukovina during June 28,1940-June 22, 1941 to 86,604 persons41.

Aer the Second World War the Soviet Union ollowed the samepolicy as in 19401941: the suppression o class enemy, mass amine

and starvation

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, ollowed by the collectivization campaign stronglystruck on the native element o the Moldovan SSR both in the termso elites and the rest o population43.

It is a well-known act that the ruthless suppression o nationalistand separatist movements was the centerpiece o Soviet nationalitypolicy44. In Soviet Moldova this powerul coercive apparatus provedquite successul during 1944-1989 in destroying both real and im-aginary ethnic oppositions and suppressing the activities o dissident

nationality groups. As a result, excepting some minor movementsin the avor o the Romanian language, any serious challenge to theMoldovan stance in political perspective was not serious throughoutthe communist period o Moldova.

As was pointed out elsewhere aer the tumultuous postwar years,Moldovas evolution as a part o the Soviet Union settled down con-siderably and rom this period, in terms o local politics, the historyo Moldova as a Soviet republic is largely unremarkable. It became a

generally quiet backwater on the periphery o the USSR, and was apopular vacation spot or the members o the Communist party andstate elite. As well within the Moldovan Communist party, Russiansand Ukrainians dominated, and at the all-union level the Moldovanswere the least represented nationality in the entire Soviet Union45. Inthis sense, Moldovan political elites were among the most loyal in theunion and maniestations o local nationalism were sparse.

Te key-positions in the promoting o politics o culture were also

held by ocials appointed rom Moscow, i.e. Russians, Ukrainians or


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Moldovans rom ransnistria. In January 1947 rom o the 37 leaderso the cultural institutions only six were Moldovans rom Bessarabia46.

As a whole the Soviet authorities never trusted the elements o thecultural elite rom Bessarabia who did not escape rom the bourgeoisideology and whose creation was infuenced by symbolism and or-malism. At the same time, alongside the accusations rom Soviet o-cials, intellectuals rom Bessarabia conronted the critics o aliationto Romanian bourgeois nationalism rom ransnistrian intellectu-als47. Besides the ght or predominance in society, these accusationswere used as a signal or Bessarabian intellectuals to be more actively

involved in supporting the Soviet regime or to be marginalized.One o the most important aspects o elite competition was the ex-istence and persistence o the hole in the middle in Soviet Moldova,i.e. the native technical and white-color elite that would secure indig-enous control over republic48. As a result o the economic rationaliza-tion ollowed by Soviet ocials that Moldova aced during the periodrom 1944 to 1989, the creation o a divided intelligentsia a nativecultural elite (which was also split between Moldovans and Roma-

nians) and a Russian or Russian speaking technical elite.49

Tis actstrongly aected the Moldovan sense o the republic as their own andnegatively infuenced the post-Soviet development o the economyand the problem o identity.

Following David D. Laitin ormula o peripheral elite-incorpo-ration in the Soviet Union50, Soviet Moldova could be considered acolonial model where native subalterns under Russian surveillance,mediating between Russian authorities and Moldovan society. As Lai-

tin says, the colonial model gave higher incentives or ambitious titu-lars to adopt many aspects o Soviet culture: the motivation to learnRussian was to become monopoly mediators standing betweenRussian rule at the center and Moldovan society at the periphery. Bydoing so they earned the trust o Soviet ocials to advance to posi-tions o local or regional authority51. In Moldova this alternative wasavailable only in the late Brezhnev era when we can observe the realindigenization o political elites. Until that moment that preerence

was given to the ransnistrians; and as it was pointed out beore, the


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Soviet elites never trusted the native rom Bessarabia. For instance,out o 15 ethnic Moldovans who had at one time been department

heads in the Moldovan Central Committee Secretariat in the 1970sand 1980s, only 5 (33 percent) were born in Bessarabia, where morethan 90 percent o the Moldovans population o the republic in 1940was concentrated52. Te rest were ocials originating rom the lebank o the Dnestr, a situation that lead to the emergence o the well-known quotation during the Moldovan SSR: I somebody wants to bea minister he should be rom the other side o the Dnestr53.

Te shi in this policy occurred in Soviet Moldova by the end o

the 1960s, when the Brezhnev regime ound it dicult to tolerate thatthe Soviet republic were essentially ruled by national maas, centredwithin the Communist parties and state apparatuses, and turned tonew personell outside the dominant party apparatuses. Te mandategiven to these men was the same as in the rest o the Soviet Union: toend economic and political corruption, to stimulate economic growth,to end ethnic avoritism and contain the more overt expressions o lo-cal nationalism, and promote a new governing elite able to carry out

the policies o the Communist Party54

.Born in the 1940s, this new generation o Moldovan party o-cials came o age in the 1980s, putting increased pressure on the oldergeneration and the ransnistrians or a greater say in the aairs o therepublic. Tey had come to power largely as a result o the preerentialpromotion o local Moldovans aer the 1960s, when the CommunistParty o Moldova attempted to indigenize the party hierarchy. As aresult, by 1989 Moldovans were in act overrepresented in the party

leadership relative to their proportion o the entire population55

. Tesocial prole o these new elites was substantially dierent rom thato the old. Tese new leaders had worked as rayon ocials or collec-tive arm heads or in other positions that necessitated some interac-tion with the large Moldovan countryside. But at the same time theybrought into the halls o power and culture the Moldovan regionalidentity o the countryside. Tis new wave o leaders was able notonly to survive the breakup o the Soviet Union but also to become

the leaders o the new states that emerged aer the collapse o the


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Soviet Union. Such leaders were the main architects o the independ-ent Moldovenism aer 199156.

THE POLITICS OF CULTURE

From the our elements o indigenization the creation o nation-al territory, linguistic indigenization, the creation o elites, and thepolitics o culture the question o national culture was the mostambiguous but in the long term impact the most persistent in thepost-Soviet period57. Te ambiguity was rst the result o the Sta-

lins amous denition o national culture as national in orm andsocialist in content.58 Te controversy, in essence, was over what wasnational in orm and what was socialist in content. Since Soviet poli-cies ollowed the Stalinist dogmas in the matter o nationalities, thecontroversy persisted also in the implementation o the politics oculture. As is widely accepted, Soviet nationalities policy was pro-oundly inconsistent, pushing or indigenization and the fourish-ing (rastsvet) o national culture while promoting the ideological

goals o stirania (obliteration o national peculiarities), sblizhenia(rapprochement), and sliania (merging). Te 1961 CPSU programwas explicitly clear in pointing out that in the all-peoples state allSoviet nationalities fourishing (rastsvetaiut), were undergoing theprocess o rapprochement(sblizhenie) as a step toward their com-plete merging (slianie)59.

Te second ambiguity was the idea o culture as such in Stalinsperception. In this sense as it was pointed out requently that the best

translation o the Stalins national culture (nationalnaia kultura)would be national identity60. Indeed as proved by experience, thepromotion o Soviet nationalities policy in the national culturemeant the aggressive promotion o the national identity together withthe dismantling o distinct national belies and social practices.

In other words, the Soviet policy systematically promoted thedistinct national identity not only through providing them nationalterritories craed by national elites which used the native languages

but also aggressively promoting the symbols o national identity: the


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national olklore, museums, dressing, cuisine, costumes, the nationaltheatre and opera, poets, historical events and the literature61.

Te system indeed permitted the Soviet elites to promote primor-dialism, but at the same time it severely limited its mobilization intodirect conrontations with Soviet power. Or, primordialism in the So-

viet context could be promoted by allowing nationalities to use theirown languages, just as long as they did not make political demandson the basis o nationality on the central state62.

What om Nairn calls a reservation culture: ethnolinguistic cul-ture without political nationalism was the only accepted healthy na-

tionhood

63

, had been also established in Soviet Moldova. Yet, SovietMoldovan primordialism was not promoted to prevent in any way theemergence o Moldovan political nationalism but rather to justiy itand to deend against possible claims rom Romania. Te Soviet re-gime retained ull power to decide what were permissibly patrioticexpressions o Moldovenism and what was perniciously nationalist,and the boundary between the two shied constantly.

Te mission to surveillance what was permissibly patriotic ex-

pression and what was pernicious nationalism in the conditions o theintensication o the national maniestations in the Moldovan SSR inthe 1950s was in the charge o Ivan I. Bodiul, First Secretary o theMoldovan Communist Party rom 1961198064.

Ivan I. Bodiul became a typical exponent o mankurtization65,known elsewhere in the non-Russians republics; the period o his ruleis widely associated with the institutionalization o the Soviet Moldov-enism both in political and cultural sense66.

Te Moldovan nationalism was especially sustained by the Sovietocials in the context o the changing landscape o Soviet-Romanianrelationship in the 1960s, when Romania reopened the problem oBessarabia, which had been taboo beore.

For combating the infuence o the broadcasting o Romanianradio and television transmissions the Moldovan SSR, Bodiul in-ormed the Soviet ocials o his intention to celebrate in 1966 someo the historical personalities and events in order to emphasize the

ties o the Moldovan people with Russia67

. Te Moldovan political and


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intellectual elite were one o the most reliable also because they soughttheir legitimacy rom the Soviet nation-builders.

Even though the existence o the Moldovan nation was unques-tionable or the Soviet ocials, the Moldovan Soviet intellectuals werein charge o the elaboration o the reliable arguments in the support-ing o this idea. History was one o the most important instruments inthe modeling o the Moldovan identity. Te teaching o the history othe Moldovans started in the Moldovan SSR rom the end o the 1950s,but only in 1967 the Central Committee o the Moldovan CommunistParty emitted a decision concerning the problems o the history o

Moldovan SSR expressing the idea o the inconsistency o the old the-oretical approaches concerning the existence o the Moldovan nation,especially in conronting the challenge o the Romanian and West-ern scholars. In this sense, historians were requested to clariy bothin terms o chronology and theory the terms o the Moldovan bour-geois nation and the Socialist Moldovan Nation68. And it is worthstressing here that the idea o the creation o the Moldovan bour-geois nation was hard to justiy as a step to the Socialist Moldovan

Nation, since its emergence generally overlapped with the commonethnogenesis o the Romanians.Mainly during the Bodiul period, Artem M. Lazarev published the

well-known workMoldavskaia Sovetskaia Gosudarstvennost i Bessar-abskii Vopros (Te Soviet Moldovan Statehood and the BessarabianQuestion) which was considered the cornerstone o Soviet Moldovanidentity and used up to this moment in the justication o the exist-ence o the Moldovan nation69. Also during this time, some scholars

tried to be justiy the existence o an independent Moldovan nationwas by constructing a racial distinction between the Moldovan andthe Romanians70.

Soviet Moldovan ocials also attempted to ground SovietMoldovenism into various sets o the invented Moldovan nationalappeal. During that period were promoted the local orms o o-cial Moldovan nationalism through celebrations o sanctioned tra-ditions and acceptable heroes o the past. Certain gures rom this

reconstructed Moldovan history were incorporated into the ocial


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Octavian D. TICU

narrative and others were excluded. Te case o Stean the Great isthe most illustrative. Stean the Great the emblematic hero o the

Romanian people was accepted as a symbol during the Soviet pe-riod because he symbolized Moldovan identity and complied withSoviet Moldovan primordialism cultivated by the Soviet authori-ties. Ironically aer independence the Moldovan nation builders alsoused the image o the Stean the Great both in terms o Moldovanindependent statehood and identity71. Soviet authorities acceptedmany other Romanian symbols in order to justiy the existence o theMoldovan people rom Middle Age. oday, some o these are still in

use by Moldovan ocials.Yet, the shi in identity was not only a result o the politics o cul-ture as part o the so policy o Soviet Armative Action, but also theresult o the hard line o Soviet modernization policy. Te collectivi-zation o agriculture, resisted by hundreds o thousands o peasants,devastated the traditionally patriarchal village leadership in the SovietMoldova. Simultaneously, rapid, orced industrialization resulted insocial and geographical mobility that urther disrupted traditional

patterns o authority and cultural practices. All these resulted in rapidurbanization, increased migration, and continued assimilation o theethnic Moldovans.

Like elsewhere in the Soviet Union, a new working class draedrom the peasantry appeared in towns and at new actory sites, with-out industrial skills, ignorant o labor traditions and organizations,and subject to elite o Russian managers and technicians72.

In 1989 the Moldovans made up 46.3 % o the urban population

(compared with 15.2 % in 1897 according to the last Russian census)73

.As Irina Livezeanu asserts, in the Moldovan SSR urbanization resultedneither in radical Russianization nor in radical Moldovanization, butrather there seems to be a stable equilibrium between the two lan-guages, with more people becoming bilingual, especially in the citiesand towns74. But it is also true that the fowing o the native to theurban area changed it in essence and made the cities and towns moreearthy, i.e. more Moldovan. As Ion Drutza said, townspeople

originating rom the countryside kept in (the city) their walk, speech,


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custom, the entire colour o their native landTe country has quite

transormed old Kishinev75.

At the same time the Moldovans continued to dominate the ru-ral landscape, representing in 1970 78.2 % o the rural popula-

tion and in 1989 80.3 %76. According to the Soviet censuses we

can assert that the linguistic assimilation o the Moldovans was not

so important and that the rural population, as in the sarist pe-

riod, maintained its parochialism with some trends toward unas-

similated bilingualism77. Te percentage o the unassimilated bilin-

guals and assimilated bilinguals was higher in the urban area, but

the Moldovans never achieved a massive phenomenon o completeassimilation. In 1970 97.7 % percent o Moldovans declared the

Moldovan language their native tongue and 33.9 % declared Russian

their second language; in 1979 96.5 % and 46.2 %, respectively; in

1989 95.4 % and 53.3 %78.

Like elsewhere in the Soviet Union, the acquisition o Russian as a

second language was almost entirely a matter o economic and practical

consideration, with the ethnic signicance o this language step playing

only a minor role79. In this sense the Russian language played in theMoldovan SSR up to 1989 the role o lingua ranca among the nation-

alities o the republic and as an instrument o communication outside.

In the same time, we witness a deep compliance o the native pop-

ulation to Soviet Moldovan identity, which can be explained by sever-

al actors. First o all, the submission was in terms o cooperation with

the Soviet authorities aer 1944, but the Moldovans did not expose an

anti-Romanian attitude or a strong Romanian identity. Rather, they

displayed an attitude o prudence and conormity to the circumstanc-

es o the time. aking into consideration their evasive attitude showed

by the Moldovans on the question o identity during sarist rule and

during Greater Romania, this conormity was not unexpected during

the Soviet period and in the present Moldova as well.

Second, this compliance was a result o existence in a society, in

which the language o power, o higher education and o public com-

munication was Russian, but also the result o a coexistence with a


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Octavian D. TICU

powerul and numerous Russian-speaking minority, dominant in sta-tus and privileges.

Tird, Soviet Armative Action with its policy o anti-Roman-ism, the Cyrillic alphabet and the isolation o the Moldovans romRomania led to the deormation and the marginalization o the nativelanguage. Te Moldovans were speaking (and still speak) a primitiveRomanian language imbued with excessive words rom Russian andSoviet vocabularies and oen even preerring Russian words whenencountering diculty nding Romanian equivalents80. As a result,many Moldovans pretended that this primitive native language is the

Moldovan language, distinct rom the Romanian language, and theystill pretend that this is the case in the Republic o Moldova today.In the end, it was the result o the Soviet nation builders poli-

cy to promote the positive image o Moldovan nationality that be-come stereotypical or their appreciation throughout the Soviet Un-ion: theblooming and shining land, the fourishing orchard, theMoldovan hospitality, Kagor wine and Belyi Aist cognac, guysrom the national dance group Joc dressed in national costumes and

dancing Moldoveneasca (the Moldovan).Te sense o being part o a Great Power and enjoying a higherstandard o living in contrast to the situation in the Communist Ro-mania created a sense o superiority among the Moldovans towardRomanians and accentuated their distinctiveness. All these werestressed in contrast to the negative stereotypes toward Romania, espe-cially in speculating Bessarabias diculty during the interwar periodor create a negative projection o the Moldovans toward Romanians.

No wonder that aer national revival in the context o the Soviet Un-ions collapse, these negative stereotypes were reactivated as a resulto the personal contacts between Moldovans and Romanians but alsosupported by the creators o the independent Moldova in terms ostatehood and identity.

Te arguments pointed out above overlapped within the myth thatthe Soviet period, especially the years o the Brezhnevs stagnation,was the only real golden age o Moldovans history, when they knew

relative economic prosperity, stability and security, and that a positive


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image o Moldovans was never achieved beore. In the post-Commu-nist period this myth perpetuated itsel not only by strengthened the

commitment to the Moldovan identity but also in terms o the politi-cal choice or the unreormed Communist Party in government81.

CONCLUSION

As has pointed out elsewhere, the most obvious consequence o anempire in the 20th century has been the physical and political divisiono a large multiethnic, multilinguistic conglomerate o cores and pe-

ripheries into a multitude o smaller countries aspiring to become na-tional states. Tese national states bring to their development dierentaspects o their imperial legacy depending on where they were locatedin the empire. Te elite reached power through dierent routes, withdierent programs and dierent appeals to various constituencies.Tey inherited imperial institutions o varying strength and ecien-cy, uneven levels o economic development and industrialization, andpolitical culture that has evolved over decades82.

Tese arguments could generally be accepted or the Soviet reali-ties yet the legacy o the Soviet Union is a special one in the way it in-fuenced the post-Soviet evolution o the republics that emerged romthe Soviet state. Te nation-making in the Soviet Union occurredwithin a unique context: a state that had set out to overcome national-ism and the dierences between nations had in act created a set oinstitutions and initiated processes that ostered the development oconscious, secular, politically mobilizable nationalities. As a result, at

the moment o its disintegration, the Soviet Union brought in beingeen states with the pretension o being nation-states and engaged inthe process o nation building.

Having secured sovereignty ollowing the collapse o the SovietUnion, the Republic o Moldova is now also embarking upon nationbuilding. In judging the present complex realities in Moldova aroundthe question o identity, we should bear in mind that Moldovas senseo imagined community and the nature and orm o its post 1991 na-

tion building is bound up with its place, real and imagined, within the


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1 Suny,Ronald G., Te Revenge o the Past: Nationalism, Revolution and the Col-lapse o the Soviet Union. Stanord: Stanord University Press, 1993, pp. 111112.

2 J. Hutchinson and A.D. Smith, Ethnicity (Oxord: University Press, 1996), p. 10.

3 I preerred in the paper the term Moldovan rather than Moldavian becauseMoldovan was the exact name put in the h line o the Soviet passport or thenative population o the Moldovan SSR.

4 On the Soviet nation building policy see Martin, erry, Te Armative ActionEmpire. New York: Cornell University Press, 2001; Suny, Ronald G. Te Re-venge o the Past: Nationalism, Revolution and the Collapse o the Soviet Union(Stanord: Stanord University Press, 1993), but also Yuri Slezkine, Te USSR asa Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State promoted Ethnic Particular-ism//Slavic Review, no. 2 (Summer 1994), pp. 414452.

5 erry Martin considers that the Armative Action Empire is the terms that t

the best in distinguish the Soviet Union rom others alternatives types includingthe empires; see Martin , Te Armative Action Empire, pp. 218.

6 On the Soviet policies to create nations rom scratch in the Central Asia, see Ak-iner, Shrin, Melting Pot, Salad Bowl Cauldron? Manipulation and Mobilizationo Ethnic and Religious Identities in Central Asia//Ethnic and Racial Studies,vol. 20, No. 2, 1997, pp. 362-98; but also Pipes, Richard , Te Formation o theSoviet Union. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1964.

7 Developments in East European Politics. London: Macmillan Press, 1993, pp. 2830.8 Martin, Te Armative Action Empire, p. 447.9 53 peoples o the Soviet Union had an administrative unit named aer them:15

Soviet Socialist Republic, 20 Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics, 8 Autono-mous Oblasti, 10 Autonomous Okrugi, Connor, Walker, Soviet Policies owardthe non-Russian Peoples in Teoretic and Historic Perspective// Motyl, Alexan-der J. (ed.) Te Post-Soviet Nations: Perspectives on the Demise o the USSR. NewYork: Colombia University Press, 1992, pp. 3335.

10 Martin, Te Armative Action Empire, pp. 9, 274.11 Ibidem, p. 274.12 Te Moldovans represented 31, 6 percent o the Moldovan ASSR while the

Ukrainians were 49,6 percent, Vsesoiuznaia Perepesi Naselenia (1926), om 4.

Moscow: Gosstatizdat, 1928, p. 24.13 On the policy o the Moldova language and identity in Moldovan ASSR see King,

Charles, Te Moldovans. Stanord: Hoover Institution Press, 2000, pp. 3662.14 Repida, A.V., Formarea RSS Moldoveneti. Chiinu: Cartea Moldoveneasc,

1977, pp. 246247. Te Moldovan delegation on the Seventh Session o the Su-preme Soviet o the USSR was composed by six Moldovans, seven Russians andone Jew, Bulat, Leonid (ed.), Basarabia 1940. Chiinu: Cartea Moldoveneasc,1991), p. 174.

15 Only six rom the total o thirteen rayons o the Moldovan ASSR were annexed tothe Moldovan SSR, Sedmaja Sessija Verhovnogo Soveta SSSR. 17 avgusta 1940.

Stenograceskii octet. Moscow, 1940, p. 183.


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Octavian D. TICU

16 By the terms o the June 26, 1940 Soviet ultimatum, Bessarabia was also pretend-ed rom Romania on the basis o the Ukrainian majority o the province, PactulMolotov Ribbentrop i consecinele sale pentru Basarabia. Chiinu: Universitas,

1992, p.p. 1718.17 Tere was N.S. Khrushchev proposal to the Central Committee o the CPUS

that the new Moldovan Soviet Republic should be created by the unication othe Moldovan population only and not o the territory o Bessarabia andthe Moldovan ASSR, seeAspects des Relations Russo-Roumains. Retrospectives etOrientations. Paris: Minard, 1967, p. 163; Lazarev, A.M.,Moldavskaia SovetskaiaGosudarstvennost i Bessarabskii Vopros. Chiinu: Cartea Moldoveneasc, p. 524.

18 King, Te Moldovans, p. 100.19 Te ransnistrians have never been part o Romania excepting the short period

o the Second World War rom 1941 to 1944.

20 Pactul Molotov-Ribbentrop i consecinele sale pentru Basarabia, pp. 113116.21 Igor Cau presents in this sense a document rom the Moldovan archives con-

cerning Te reunication o the all Moldovan people within the Moldovanunitary Soviet state elaborated by V.M. Senkevici, the director o the Instituteo Research o Moldavian SSR, see Cau, Igor, Politica naional n MoldovaSovietic, 1944 -1989. Chiinu: Cartdidact, 2000, pp. 5152.

22 Suny, Te Revenge o the Past: Nationalism, Revolution and the Collapse o theSoviet Union, pp. 111112.

23 A nation is a historically evolved, stable community based on a common lan-guage, territory, economic lie and psychological make-up maniested in a com-munity o culture, Stalin, Iosi V.,Marksizm i natsionalnyi vopros. Moscow: Poli-tizdat, 1950, p. 51.

24 Ibidem, p. 163.25 Ibidem, p. 62.26 King, Te Moldovans, p. 64.27 Istoria Respubliki Moldova. Chiinu: ipograa Academiei de tiine, 1997, p. 216.28 Cau, Politica naional n Moldova Sovietic, p. 36.29 Bruchis, Michael, Nations, Nationalities, Peoples: A Study o the Nationalities Pol-

icy o Communist Party in Soviet Moldavia. Boulder, Co: East European Mono-

graphs, 1984, pp. 6162.30 Cau,Politica naional n Moldova Sovietic, 19441989, p. 46.31 Especially aer C. agliavini armation at the International Conerence o Lin-

guistic in Florence in 1956 that the only dierence between Moldovan and Roma-nian language was the Cyrillic alphabet, see Bruhis, Michael, One Step Back, woSteps Forward: On the Language Policy o the Communist Party o the Soviet Unionin the National Republics. Boulder, Co.: East European Monographs,1982, p. 126.

32 Cau, Politica naional n Moldova Sovietic, p. 55.33 Among others we can mention Mihai Eminescu, Vasile Alexandri, Ion Creanga,

Dmitrie Cantemir, Alexadru Donici etc., who were also part o the Romanian

cultural pantheon, Bruhis, Nations, p. 77.


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34 Negru, Gheorghe, Politica etnolingvistic n RSS Moldoveneasc, 19401991.Chiinu: Prut Internaional, 2000, p. 44.

35 Emilian Bukov was one o the Moldovan writers borne in Bessarabia accepted

by the Soviet authorities aer 1944, Constantin, Ion, Basarabia sub ocupaiasovietic de la Stalin la Gorbaciov, Bucharest: Fiat Lux, 1994, p. 64.

36 Cau, Politica naional n Moldova Sovietic, p. 160.37 Negru, Politica etnolingvistic n RSS Moldoveneasc, pp. 3940.38 King, Te Moldovans, pp. 7273.39 Beissinger, Mark R., State Building in the Shadow o an Empire-State: Te So-

viet Legacy in Post-Soviet politics//Dawisha, K and Parrott, B., Te End oEmpire? Te transormation o the USSR in Comparative Perspective. New York:M. E. Sharpe, 1997, p. 165.

40 According to Valeriu Pasat, on the night o June 13 to 14, 1941 in Moldovan SSR

were arrested and deported 18,392 persons, cited by Cau, Politica naionaln Moldova Sovietic , p. 31. Bohdan Nahaylo and Victor Swoboda calculated tomore than 50,000 the persons deported in that night rom the Baltic States andup to 123,000 the whole number during the year o the Soviet rule, Nahaylo, Bo-hdan and Swoboda, Victor, Soviet Disunion: A History o Nationalities Problem inthe USSR (New York: Free Press, 1990), p.p. 8889.

41 Cau, Politica naional n Moldova Sovietic, p. 32.42 216,000 persons died in the Soviet Moldova during 19461947 as a result o the

mass-starvation, Gribincea, Mihai, Basarabia n primii ani de ocupaie sovietic,19441950, Cluj-Napoca: Dacia, 1995, p. 64.

43 30,050 persons were deported in Siberia only in the night o July 5-6, 1949,icanu, Ion, Desrnirea bolevic n Basarabia. Chiinu: Adrian, 1994,pp. 100101.

44 Zaslavsky, Victor, Te Soviet Union//Barkey, K., and Hagen, M. von, (eds), A-ter Empire: Te Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg Empires .Boulder: Westview Press, 1997, p. 85.

45 King, Te Moldovans, p. 98.46 Casu,Politica naional n Moldova Sovietic, p. 47.47 Ibidem, p. 48.

48 See on this point erry Martin refection concerning the hole in the middle inthe Soviet East, Martin, Te Armative Action Empire, p. 179.

49 In 1964 rom the total o the directors o industrial enterprises in Soviet Moldo-va, the native Moldovans constitutes only 2,3 percent. In the 1980 their numberwere only 8,6 percent reported to 64 percent o native population in republic,Stavil, Veaceslav, Evoluia componenei naionale a elitei politico-economice aRSSM// Revista de Istorie a Moldovei, No. 4, 1996, p. 39.

50 David D. Laitin developed three patterns o peripheral elite-incorporation in theUSSR: a most-avored-lord pattern: incorporation on equal terms; integralistmodel: capable o running their own republic, the higher level o literacy and

education; and the colonial model: mediating between Russian authorities and


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Octavian D. TICU

the native population, Laitin, David D., Identity in Formation, Ithaca and Lon-don: Cornell University Press, 1998, p. 59.

51 Ibidem, p.p. 7071.

52 Beissinger, Mark R., Elites and Ethnic Identities in Soviet and Post-Soviet Poli-tics// Motyl, Alexander J. (ed.), Te Post-Soviet Nations. New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1992, p. 152.

53 Romanian version is Dac vrei s i ministru trebuie sa i de peste Nistru.54 Suny, Te Revenge o the Past: Nationalism, Revolution and the Collapse o the

Soviet Union, p. 120.55 King, Te Moldovans, p. 135.56 Mircea Snegur, the rst president o the independent Republic o Moldova, rom

an agronomist on the collective arm advanced in 1985 as Central Committeesecretary; Andrei Sangheli, one o the rst Prime Ministers, worked also as an

agronomist on a collective arm and later served as Party Rayon Committee FirstSecretary and a member o the Republican Council o Ministers; Nicolae u,oreign minister during the Sanghelis government, was a collective arm directorand rst secretary o the Chisinau city party committee; Petru Lucinschi, the sec-ond president o Moldova, was First Secretary o the Moldovan Communist Party(1989-91) and a member o the Politburo o the Soviet Union Communist Party.

57 Martin, , Te Armative Action Empire, p. 182.58 Stalin,Marksizm, pp. 158, 194.59 Connor, Soviet Policies oward the non-Russian Peoples in Teoretic and His-

toric Perspective, p. 58.60 Martin, Te Armative Action Empire, p. 193.61 Ibidem, p. 13.62 Roeder, Philip G., Soviet Federalism and Ethnic Mobilization//World Politics,

No. 43, 1991, pp. 196232.63 Nairn, om, Beyond Big Brother// New Statesman and Society, No. 3, 105 (June

15, 1990), p. 31.64 Te appointing o I. Bodiul was going to temperate the emergence o the grow-

ing cultural nationalism and to satisy the repeated requests o the Moldovansto have a leader o the own nationality but in the same time it was an all-Union

trends promoted during the Khrushchev period.65 Tere is an anecdotic episode when in order to demonstrate the existence o the

Moldovan language, in December 1976, during his visit to Nicolae Ceauescuin Bucharest, Bodiul introduced in his delegation a translator rom Romanianlanguage, Rogers, K. H., Moldavian, Romanian and the Question o a NationalLanguage//Manoliu-Manea, M. (ed.), Te ragic Plight o a Border Area: Bessara-bia and Bukovina, Los Angeles: Humbold University Press, 1983, pp. 167174.

66 In 1946 was created the rst State University in Chiinu, in 1957 was establishedthe Institute o Language and Literature, and in 1961 was created the MoldovanAcademy o Science. All these institution played an important role in the cultural

legimization o the Soviet Moldovenism.


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67 Cau, Politica naional n Moldova Sovietic , p. 64.68 Negru, Gheorghe, Crearea conceptului naiunii burgheze i socialiste

moldovenesti n istoriograa sovietica// Revista de Istorie a Moldovei, No. 12,

1998, pp. 7273.69 Artem M. Lazarev maintained or all his lie the appartenence to the

Moldovan nation and published in 1995 a very suggestive book in this senseJa - Moldavanian (I am Moldovan). iraspol: Pridnestrovskii Gosudarstvenno-Korporativnyi Universitet, 1995.

70 Velikanova, M.S. , Paleotropologia Prutsko-Dnestrovskogo Mezhdurecia. Moscow:Nauka, 1975.

71 Boia, Lucian, Miturile comunismului romnesc. Bucharest: Editura UniversitiiBucureti, 1995, pp. 159-160

72 Suny, Te Revenge o the Past: Nationalism, Revolution and the Collapse o the

Soviet Union, p. 107.73 Livezeanu, Irina, Urbanization in a Low Key and Linguistic Change in Soviet

Moldavia, Part 1//Soviet Studies, Vol. 33, No. 3.(July 1981), p. 32974 Livezeanu, Urbanization in a Low Key and Linguistic Change in Soviet Molda-

via, p. 32875 Ibidem, p. 337.76 Cau, Politica naional n Moldova Sovietic, p. 108; Livezeanu, Urbanization

in a Low Key and Linguistic Change in Soviet Moldavia, p. 334.77 I relied here on the Brian Silvers ormula o assimilation: a) Parochialism: know-

ing only the native language; b) Unassimilated bilingualism: knowing as well thelanguage o the center, but using it in limited domains, and with great diculty;c) Assimilated bilingualism: relying principally on the central language, but main-taining some acilities in the local language; d) Assimilation: becoming monolin-gual in the central language, Silver, Brian, Methods o Deriving on Bilingualismrom the 1970 Soviet Census// Soviet Studies, No. 27 (October 1975), pp. 57497.

78 Livezeanu, Urbanization in a Low Key and Linguistic Change in Soviet Molda-via, p. 329; Casu, Politica nationala in Moldova Sovietica, pp. 104105. In theRussian empire, 27, 8 percent o the entire Bessarabian population could speakRussian.

79 Laitin, David D., Language Policy and the Language Russication o the SovietNationalities// Azrael, J. (ed), Soviet Nationality Policies and Practices. New York:Praeger, 1978, pp. 282-286.

80 Cau, Politica naional n Moldova Sovietic, p. 141.81 Moldova made history on March 6th 2005 elections as this was the rst time that

a state reely elected Communist rulers in two consecutive elections.82 Barkey, Karen, Tinking about Consequences o Empire//Barkey, K., and

Hagen, M. von, (eds),Afer Empire: Te Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman,and Habsburg Empires. Boulder: Westview Press, 1997, p. 104.

Straipsnis teiktas redakcijai 2010 m. sausio mn.

Documents

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the Emergence of the MOLDOVAN Nation