Nationalities Papers, Vol. 26, No. 1, 1998

CARVING A MOLDAVIAN IDENTITY OUT OF HISTORY

Wim van Meurs

A Mystery and a Miracle in History—the Moldavian Nation1

"For what we all are, really, is elegant scarecrows on fields of words."2 GabrielLiiceanu's metaphor of "discourse" is particularly revealing for the case of theMoldavian nation. When the field is already covered with scarecrows, a new one willhave trouble finding a free spot and functioning properly. Rivaling nationalist andcommunist interpretations of Moldavian history have left little free space for anoriginal view: historical facts have been interpreted and reinterpreted time and timeagain, so it has become increasingly difficult to create new meanings and to findfresh words.

No matter how convincing arguments regarding the relations between nationbuild-ing, modernization, statebuilding and centralization may be on a theoretical level, onclose scrutiny national discourses appear first and foremost as power assets in thehands of politicians. In the twentieth century, political regimes have become awareof the ability to interfere in nationbuilding processes and have tried to constructidentities for latecomers or reconstruct the identity of established nations. This articleassumes that nations are historical phenomena and socio-political constructions.Efforts to construct a Moldavian identity are first and foremost efforts to carve aMoldavian part out of Romanian history. The first question is whether the "origins"of Moldavian nationbuilding are to be found in nineteenth century Bessarabia or inthe Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Republic of the interwar years. Next a survey isprovided of the four pillars of the Moldavian national myth—ethnogenesis, language,state and culture—and the various historical interpretations based on this myth afterthe Second World War. A description of the collapse of the four pillars and the mythas a whole in the late 1980s leads to the most recent efforts on the part of thepost-Soviet Snegur regime to recreate the Moldavian national identity. A newMoldavian myth would reinforce the idea of an independent Moldavia, but most factsand interpretations in the field of Moldavian history have already been taken by atleast one other scarecrow.

A Tsarist Invention?

At the end of the eighteenth century, the expanding Russian Empire incorporated thefirst territories inhabited by Romanians. The Austro-Russian war against the OttomanEmpire (1787-1792) left the Tsar in command of the territory between the Bug andthe lower reaches of the Dnestr. The Third Polish Partition three years later added

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the upper course of the Dnestr to Russia. The Dnestr thus became the border betweenthe Russian Empire and the Moldavian Principality, which belonged to the OttomanEmpire.

At that time all three Romanian Principalities—Transylvania, Wallachia andMoldavia—were under foreign domination. Transylvania in the northwest belongedto the Habsburg Empire, while the princes of Wallachia in the south and Moldaviain the northeast were vassals of the Sultan in Constantinople. Since its foundation inthe fourteenth century, the Moldavian Principality had expanded from the old capitalof Suceava in Bukovina towards the Black Sea. In the early fifteenth century,Moldavian landlords and peasants cast a covetous eye on the fertile but almostuninhabited lands on the left bank of the Dnestr. Two hundred years later, theRussian conquerors found a territory with a small but predominantly Romanianpopulation.3

The spoils of the next Russo-Turkish war (1806-1812) fell short of Tsar Alexan-der I's expectations—the incorporation of both Wallachia and Moldavia—becausethe threat of Napoleon's campaign against Russia forced him to transfer MikhailKutuzov, the brilliant commander of the war against the Turks, to the western frontand to negotiate peace with the Sultan. The Sultan ceded part of the Romanianheartland, the Dnestr-Prut interfluve, since then known as Bessarabia. The Tsargranted the population of the new guberniia significant privileges and autonomy.Similar policies were applied in other "western" regions of the empire, such asFinland and Poland. Bessarabia, moreover, was supposed to constitute a showpiecefor the Balkan peoples "under the Turkish yoke" of the advantages of Russiandominion.4

In contradiction to the dominant opinion in Romanian historiography, the tsaristregime did not initiate denationalizing and discriminatory nationality policies inBessarabia before the middle of the nineteenth century. Basically, before theCrimean War, the concept of goal-oriented "nationality policies" was totally alien tothe government in St. Petersburg. The immigration of Ukrainian and Russianpeasants was partly spontaneous and partly an official measure to enhance therelatively low population density in rural Bessarabia. The cancelling of Bessarabia'sprivileges and autonomy in 1828 was part of Nicholas I's effort to centralize and tounify governmental structures.

Meanwhile the Romanian national movement in Transylvania, Wallachia and theremaining parts of Moldavia had reached a new stage. In the seventeenth century,intellectuals in the three principalities had become aware of their common Dacian-Roman ancestry. In terms of contemporary nationbuilding theory, they constructed amyth of a common ethnogenesis and started to consolidate and propagate a nationalconsciousness on this basis. A young generation of boiars ("landlords") returnedfrom Paris full of new ideals: cultural revival, a national state and national indepen-dence. Although the revolution of 1848 failed in all three principalities, these idealsremained on the political agenda. In 1859 the advocates of national unification

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successfully accomplished the unification of Wallachia and Moldavia against the willof the Great Powers. The Tsar was not persuaded: when London and Paris acceptedthe new political constellation, St. Petersburg kept referring to the new Romanianstate as "Moldo-Wallachia" in diplomatic correspondence.5

The Romanian nationbuilders removed Slavic elements from the lexicon andintentionally promoted Latin and French influences in standard Romanian. Moreover,in 1859 the Cyrillic script, which for centuries had been used to write the Romanianlanguage, was officially replaced by the Latin script. In Bessarabia, however, theinfluence of the Russian language did not diminish, and the Cyrillic script wasmaintained. In Bessarabia only a small group of intellectuals was aware of theRomanian nationbuilding process. The backward and predominantly rural populationbetween the Prut and Dnestr Rivers had only a local consciousness. They had nomature national identity, and they identified themselves as "Moldavians" only in aterritorial, non-ethnic sense.

According to some authors, the Russian government referred to the population ofBessarabia as "Romanians" until 1859, and as "Moldavians" after that, supposedlyin an effort to separate the Bessarabians from their compatriots on the other side ofthe Prut, who called themselves "Moldavians" and "Wallachians" before 1859 and"Romanians" after the unification.6 From a purely functionalistic point of view thisargument makes sense, but in the light of the historical realities of the nineteenthcentury it is rather questionable. First of all, indications for a national consciousnessin Bessarabia before the beginning of the twentieth century are minimal, even amongintellectuals. The Russian policy to restrict the use of the Romanian language inBessarabian schools and to ban the publication or importation of books in theRomanian language and the Latin script in the second half of the century was partof the overall trend towards Russification and the beginning of a tsarist nationalitypolicy as such rather than a specific grudge against the Bessarabian population. Thereis, moreover, no indication whatsoever that either the Romanian or the Russiangovernment considered Bessarabia a real source of political conflict. Romanianintellectuals were well aware of the situation in Bessarabia. As the RomanianForeign Minister Take Ionescu said in 1891: "From Transylvania we hear thelamentations from our brethren, but from Bessarabia we hear nothing any more."7

This silence was primarily due to a pronounced lack of national consciousnessamong the backward Moldavian peasants and not to tsarist repression. The addi-tion "any more" indicates that Ionescu assumed that the natural, supra-historicalRomanian national consciousness of the Bessarabians had been temporarily weak-ened by tsarist repression. Evidently, the tsarist regime itself did not think primarilyin terms of national-ethnic loyalties and conflicts.8

The Russian government was aware of the Romanian-ness of its Bessarabiancitizens, but it did not try consistently to influence the local nationbuilding processin another direction by designating them as "Moldavians." Some official documentsand scholarly studies of the late nineteenth century refer to the Bessarabians

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as "Romanians," others as "Moldavians." Since the interwar period, Romaniannationalists have accumulated a list of Russian sources which (implicitly) "admitted"the Romanian-ness of the Moldavians.9 In the late nineteenth century even theRussifier Pavel Batiushkov failed to note any ethnic and historical differencesbetween the Moldavians on the left bank of the Prut and the Romanians across theriver.10 In 1891 a Russian encyclopedia devoted more pages to the "local laws ofBessarabia" than to the guberniia as such, indicating that centralization was moreimportant than regional peculiarities and ethnic identities. It referred to the Bessara-bians as "Moldavians" but added the alternative "Romanians" in brackets. Theencyclopedia showed no anti-Romanian sentiments; it stated that together with thethree Romanian principalities, Bessarabia belonged to the Roman province of Dacia,deriving its name from the Wallachian dynasty of the Basarabs who briefly occupiedthe area in the fourteenth century. Thereafter, Bessarabia became part of theMoldavian Principality. The encyclopedia mentioned the academic debate overwhether the ancestors of the Moldavians (Romanians) were local Dacians or Romancolonists but failed to identify a Moldavian ancestry and history as distinct from theRomanian. Obviously, from the Russian point of view, territorial conquests were anatural process and needed no historical, ethnic or other justification.11

In sum, before the October Revolution the inhabitants of Bessarabia probablyconsidered themselves "Moldavians" in a natural, primarily local-territorial sense. Apolitically constructed Moldavian national myth did not exist. Neither the tsaristadministration nor Russian academic circles made a consistent effort to provide theBessarabian population with a national identity, an ethnogenesis, or a national historyof its own. The idea of such a strategy runs counter to the reality of nineteenthcentury Russia. At that time, nations were seen as supra-historical, immutableentities. The tsarist administration, moreover, was rather insensitive to issues ofnationalism and interfered only superficially in the life of its subjects, focusing ontaxation rather than nationbuilding.12

The National Movement, 1917-1918

In the Revolution of 1905, a Moldavian national movement appeared on the scene,initiated, organized and staffed by a handful of local intellectuals. After the sup-pression of the revolution, they managed to keep a small stream of Moldavian culturealive. In 1917, Bessarabia witnessed parallel movements for social and nationalliberation. Due to what would become known in Soviet historiography as "theconspiracy of the Romanian government, Moldavian bourgeois-nationalists, theWestern capitalist powers, the Ukrainian Rada, the Bessarabian landowners, and theWhite generals," the nationalists got the upper hand. They dominated the Sfatul Jarii(National Council) and the net result of the revolution of 1917-1918 was theproclamation of unification with Romania on 9 April 1918. At the very beginning of

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1918, the Bolsheviks had challenged the dominant position of the Sfatul Tarii inBessarabia and forced the Moldavian national leadership to ask for military supportfrom the Romanian government, which was readily given.

This "Marea Unire" or "Great National Unification" is still considered the climaxof Romanian history. Inevitably, historians, and not only Romanian historians, haveassumed a posteriori that the Moldavian leadership of the Sfatul Tarii had beenstriving for unification with the Romanian motherland all along. From their national-ist perspective, this was only natural.

The assumption that national identity is a sociopolitical construction based on aparticular selection of historical facts in a particular political constellation, ratherthan a supra-historical entity, leads to a different conclusion. Since 1812, Bessarabiahad developed more or less isolated from Romania. By the end of the century, thesmall, indigenous, intellectual elite in this backward, agrarian, border region of thetsarist empire developed an interest in the culture, history and origins of thepopulation. By the time of the First World War, they had not yet reached the secondstage, the consolidation of a (Moldavian or Romanian) national identity underpinnedby myths concerning the ethnogenesis, territory, language, culture and historical fateof their nation. The leaders of the Sfatul Jarii were typical representatives of thesocial groups identified in numerous (theoretical) studies as the nationbuilders parexcellence: lawyers, teachers, professors, journalists and doctors.13 Evidently, by1917, they were still far away from the third stage—the popularization of thisconstructed identity and its political instrumentalization. Therefore, in a way, theRevolution of 1917 (and the ensuing opportunities for national liberation) caughtthem unprepared.

When the news of the Tsar's abdication reached Chi§inau in March 1917, nomature national movement and ideology was available. Typically, the MoldavianNational Party, the forerunner of the Sfatul Tarii, demanded only autonomy withina future Russian Federation and, in late 1917, a Moldavian Republic was proclaimed.The original membership list of the Sfatul Tarii indicates the nationality of themajority as "Moldavian," not Romanian. The political and military situation changedat a dizzying speed in those days. With German forces advancing into Romania andinto Ukraine, wild gangs of Cossacks and bloodthirsty Bolsheviks crossing theDnestr, and retreating and deserting Russian forces ransacking villages, indepen-dence was never a realistic option for the Sfatul Tarii leadership. Nevertheless, theidea of unification with Romania split the leadership. Both votes on conditionalunification on 9 April 1918, and on the annulment of these conditions on 10December 1918, were rather undemocratic. The local intellectuals were still in themiddle of consolidating a regional identity into a full-blown national identity, be itRomanian or Moldavian. The political circumstances and outside interference forcedthe elite to opt for a Romanian identity, but left the masses unaffected: the nationalistRomanian politician and historian Nicolae Iorga dedicated one of his books to "thosewho will make the Moldavians aware of their [true] national identity!"

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The Bessarabian Communists and the Moldavian Republic

The Moldavian myth—that the Moldavian nation is distinct from the Romaniannation in terms of ethnogenesis, language, culture and history—was created bySoviet communists in the interwar period. Since the Second World War, politicians,propagandists and scholars in Chisjnau have presented several versions of the myth.The basic principle, however, remained the same.

Soviet history-writing on Bessarabia prior to the Second World War consists ofthe historical publications from the Moldavian Autonomous Republic (1924-1940),pamphlets by communist exiles in the Soviet Union who had fled the Romanianoccupation of Bessarabia and who had organized in the Obshchestvo Bessarabtsev(Association of Bessarabians, 1924-1938), and certain statements by Moscow pro-pagandists and historians. The small number of books and articles devoted toBessarabia in Moscow indicates the relative political unimportance and low priorityof this subject. The lack of accepted historiographic traditions in this area meant thata communist interpretation had to be constructed. A number of Party magazines inMoscow and Kharkov carried articles on the October Revolution on the Romanianfront in 1917-1918, which were obviously meant to arouse the revolutionary spiritof the workers in Bessarabia.14 Most of the brochures published in Moscow in themid-1920s, written by Bessarabian communists affiliated with the ObshchestvoBessarabtsev, were ferocious tirades against the Romanian conquest of Bessarabiaand the "bloody oppression of the Bessarabian workers by the Romanian ruling classof bourgeoisie and landlords." The historical accounts they included were meagerand often restricted to the October Revolution and the contemporary revolutionaryfight of the Bessarabians.

In 1925, Christian Rakovskii published his interpretation of the revolutionaryhistory of Bessarabia in the brochure Romania and Bessarabia.15 The opinions ofRakovskii carried a great deal of weight as he had been a leading man in theRomanian Social-Democratic movement, one of the top people in the Comintern, anda leader in Soviet Ukraine; at this time he was the Soviet Ambassadorto England. Rakovskii presented his own interpretation of Bessarabian history,beginning with the Moldavian ethnogenesis. His refutation of the Romanian nationalarguments was couched in a political-ideological language and was not basedon scientific argumentation or historical documents; he was, as he said, a greatbeliever in the will of the people, not in "the fabrications (izmyshleniia) of pro-fessors."16

Rakovskii used the word "Moldavians" without any ethnic connotation: thewandering of the peoples in the Dark Ages had made the Bessarabian populationan "ethnographic mosaic," which accepted, for the sake of convenience, the Roma-nian language.17 The concept of the Moldavians as ethnically different from theRomanians was completely missing from his booklet. Rakovskii identified theSfatul Tarii leaders primarily as "bourgeoisie" and not as Moldavians. In order to

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prove that the Sfatul Xarii's decisions did not represent the will of the population, hestressed the underrepresentation of peasants rather than the overrepresentation ofMoldavians.18

Not only the Moldavian myth but also another (future) myth of Moldavianhistoriography was conspicuous by its absence. Rakovskii mentioned the resistancein Bessarabia against what he called "the Romanian annexation" but failed tomention the establishment of Soviet power in Bessarabia: on 14 January 1918,Bolshevik forces had occupied Chi§inau and disbanded the Sfatul Xarii, to be chasedout of town themselves by the Romanian army a few days later. This is remarkable,as Rakovskii had been a leading Bolshevik in Odessa in those days and aneyewitness to these events. Perhaps the Bolsheviks had failed to notice their officialassumption of power in Chisinau at that time! Shortly after the publication of hisbooklet, Christian Rakovskii shared the political fate of Trotsky. His. name and hisbooklet on Bessarabia became taboo in Soviet historiography.19 His failure torecognize the Moldavians as an independent nation also meant that his work wouldquickly become obsolete.

The Bessarabian exiles in Moscow wrote their brochures to stir up politicalturmoil and to create an alternative historical tradition for the Bessarabian people.These pamphlets were phrased in communist political jargon as was Rakovskii's.The authors, most of them members of the Obshchestvo Bessarabtsev, were dog-matic communists to whom national concepts such as the Moldavian nation andlanguage were insignificant and "alien." For them, the class struggle was sufficientreason to shatter the claim of the Romanian ruling class to Bessarabia. They stressedthe Romanian oppression in Bessarabia, economic stagnation, the treachery of theSfatul X^rii, and the revolutionary activities they claimed were taking place inBessarabia.20 The creation of this revolutionary tradition was meant to instill a senseof pride and identity in the population of Bessarabia.

Articles in Krasnaia Bessarabiia (Red Bessarabia), the journal of the ObshchestvoBessarabtsev, were also written in the ideological terms of class struggle andintended to remind the reading public of the heroism associated with the revolution-ary struggle. The cover of this magazine depicted Bessarabia as a woman in chains,chained to Romania. The pages were filled with stories venerating the heroes of1917-1918 and with descriptions of the communist underground movement in theinterwar years. These writers had no qualms admitting that most of the fighters werenon-Moldavians and not even born in Bessarabia. After the Second World War,however, Soviet historians would go to great lengths to prove the indigenous rootsof the Bessarabian revolutionary movement and the Moldavian participation in thismovement.21 In all the publications and meetings of the Obshchestvo Bessarabtsev,the contemporary situation and recent history of Bessarabia predominated. Less than2% of all Soviet books and articles on Moldavian history published before 1940 dealtwith pre-1917 history.22 The lack of trained historians, published sources, andinstitutions also contributed to this situation.

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Even when the Moldavian myth became part of the official doctrine at the end ofthe 1920s, the Obshchestvo Bessarabtsev stuck to its original communist argumenta-tion and jargon.23 When the Moldavian Autonomous Republic was founded on theleft bank of the Dnestr in 1924, local historical institutions and publications followedgradually. In 1928, a Moldavian Scientific Committee was set up for "the study ofthe territory and culture of the Moldavian people."24 In the field of history, the mostimportant members were Samuil Lekhttsir and Naum Nartsov. Lekhttsir collected anenormous amount of source material on the history of the left bank. Nartsovpromised a multi-volume history of Transnistria, but by 1940 a historical synthesishad yet to be published in Tiraspol.25 Like all Soviet historiography of the 1920s, thepublications from the Moldavian Autonomous Republic were dominated by commu-nist ideology and revolutionary themes. The lion's share of the publications consistedof memoirs from revolutionary heroes and eyewitnesses to the events of 1917 and1918.26

In the next decade, Nartsov and other propagandists published a number of articlesin Ail-Union Party journals such as Bor'ba Klassov {Class Struggle) and IstorikMarksist {Marxist Historian). For lack of Party dogmas and other examples to guidethem, the historians felt insecure dealing with pre-revolutionary history. As a result,the few brief excursions into this area were extremely confused, often contradictory,and lacking in references to historical facts or sources. In Tiraspol in 1933 TheRomanian Intervention in Bessarabia was published. It is primarily a compilation ofmemoirs and older articles on the events of 1917-1918, but it also contains a rare(though brief) survey of pre-revolutionary history.27

The preconceived aim of this historical excursion was to show the falsity of theRomanian historical claims to Bessarabia. In view of later developments, thearguments are almost endearing, although they are clearly inaccurate. The Bessara-bian question first arose in 1856 when the European powers decided to handBessarabia over to the Moldavian Principality. After the Second World War, noSoviet historian would mark 1856 as the beginning of the Bessarabian question. Forthem it started in 1918 when "bourgeois-landlord Romania forcefully incorporatedBessarabia with the help of the treacherous Sfatul Jarii."

The idea of a Moldavian national identity is still completely absent in the 1933book. The authors mentioned that in the interwar years, the Ukrainian, Russian, andBulgarian minorities were exploited and repressed by the Romanian regime. But, theauthors said not one word on the national repression of the Moldavians by theRomanian regime. Similarly, the behavior of Sfatul Jarii members who conspiredwith Bucharest to achieve unification was explained as a "bourgeois-landlordintrigue" and not as national betrayal by these Moldavians.28

Looking back at this consistently communist interpretation of history without"Moldavian nationalism" in the interwar period, the question arises what impact washad by the creation of the Moldavian Autonomous Republic on the left bank in 1924.Prior to 1924 the idea of a Moldavian Republic had not been considered by the

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Bolsheviks. The slogans used in Soviet diplomatic protests against the Romanianannexation and in local uprisings in Bessarabia (in 1919 and 1924) spoke of"workers and peasants" and demanded a Bessarabian Soviet Republic. By 1924 theKremlin leaders gave up the idea that a world revolution would occur and thatBessarabia would be reconquered. In October 1924, the Party arbitrarily turned someMoldavian-inhabited parts of Ukraine into an Autonomous Republic within theUkrainian SSR. The original idea had been of a Moldavian Union Republic, but theUkrainian leadership wanted only to create some autonomous raions and oblasts forthe Moldavians. However, even this compromise—the creation of an autonomousrepublic—implied the existence of a Moldavian titular nationality.

In contrast to the tsarist regime, the communist regime was determined to interferein the life of its subjects on every level. On ideological grounds, the communistleaders were convinced of the possibility and the necessity to create a new socialistman and to construct (national) identities. The dynamics of Ail-Union politics in the1920s produced a Moldavian national identity. As argued by Charles King in thisvolume, a Moldavian language was constructed to communicate the communistmessage to the common people, and, in line with the indigenization campaign topromote local cadres, a Moldavian nation was created.29

Despite the rise of Russian nationalism and Soviet patriotism in the 1930s,orthodox communism remained the dominant part of ideology before the SecondWorld War. Only those elements of a Moldavian identity that served the cause ofcommunism were pursued with vigor. In 1925 a Comintern commission introducedthe concept of a Moldavian nation as official dogma.30 Consequently, the very sameobedient, Romanian communists who in 1924 voiced their support for "the struggleof the Bessarabian workers" condemned "the suppression of the Moldavian nation"at their next congress in 1928.31 The conflict, however, was not Moldavians versusRomanians, but the Moldavian people versus the Romanian bourgeois state. Noeffort was made to construct a Moldavian ethnogenesis or a Moldavian history.Moldavian culture and language were characterized as "proletarian" and werecontrasted to the Romanian "bourgeois" culture and its language with its decadent,artificial French and Latin influences. In sum, until 1940, national arguments oflegitimacy took second place to the original communist ideology.

The Impossible Ultimatum of 26 June 1940

On 26 June 1940, Stalin activated the secret protocols of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and sent the Romanian government an ultimatum, demanding theimmediate cession of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to Moscow. The text of theultimatum exemplified the Kremlin's lack of interest in, and knowledge of, thehistory, culture, and demography of Bessarabia.

"In 1918, Romania took advantage of the military weakness of Russia and forciblyrobbed the Soviet Union (Russia) of part of its territory—namely, Bessarabia, and

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thus broke the century-old unity of Bessarabia, inhabited principally by Ukrainians,with the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. The Soviet Union, never reconciled to thisrobbery, considers it as necessary and timely, in the interest of re-establishing justice,to take up jointly with Romania the settlement of the return of Bessarabia to theSoviet Union."32

After the war, most Soviet historians chose to ignore this preamble with thebizarre argument that Ukrainians comprised a majority in Bessarabia.33 Obviously,the assertion in the preamble was incompatible with the myth of the uniqueMoldavian language and nation. The ultimatum, like all previous political andhistorical writings, failed to mention one of the main subsequent arguments for thereturn of Bessarabia: the (re)unification of the Moldavian people. The contention thatthe majority of the Bessarabian population was Ukrainian and that this area should,therefore, be part of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic—no matter how false—was,nevertheless, an argument in terms of nation and ethnicity, rather than class andinternationalism.34

Immediately after the ultimatum, the Kremlin ordered Soviet historians to preparea Soviet view on the history of the recently acquired territories as a justificationfor the annexation. Tentative views were prepared by Bessarabian exiles andcommunist propagandists from Moscow. Both groups were hard pressed to maketheir writings comply with both the historical facts and the ultimatum (not necess-arily in this order). Two examples are an article by Naum Nartsov for IstorikMarksist and the official brochure Soviet Bessarabia and Soviet Bukovina; bothtestify to the unsatisfactory and shaky solutions the historians and agitators inventedunder pressure.35

The brochure, based on the text of the ultimatum and some vague notions aboutthe history of Bessarabia, was obviously put together in a hurry. The justification forthe Soviet ultimatum was implicitly based on two arguments. The first argument isfamiliar: the forceful Romanian annexation of 1918. The second argument is new:Bessarabia is claimed to be original Russian territory because Generals Suvorov andKutuzov decided to incorporate it into the Empire around 1800 to protect the peoplefrom assaults by foreign conquerors. This argument intimated the beginnings of there-evaluation of the annexation of 1812. The term "foreign conquerors," from whichthe Russians were carefully exempted, also intimated the instigation of the friendshipof peoples myth. The gradual pro-Russian re-orientation, the shift to national ratherthan communist language, and the incorporation of the myths in Soviet historio-graphy were tentative and subtle rather than outspoken, which makes it unlikely thatthey occurred on direct Party orders.

While the indications of Russian nationalism were very meager, mention ofMoldavian nationalism and the Moldavian myth were completely absent from theofficial brochure: "For twenty-two years the Dnestr separated the people of Bessara-bia from ..." After the war, a historian of the Moldavian Republic would havefinished without hesitation: "... from their ethnic kin on the left bank." The quo-

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tation, however, continues: "... from a different world, the great Soviet Union, theworkers of Soviet Moldavia."36 In order to underpin the ultimatum's argument of theUkrainian majority in Bessarabia, the authors observed that "in 1897, Russians,Ukrainians, and Moldavians together accounted for 76% of the population ofBessarabia." This figure was given without further specifying that almost half of thepopulation consisted of Moldavians in that census!37 Propagation of a Moldavianidentity based on a Moldavian majority in their own state after the Second WorldWar contradicted the claim of a Ukrainian majority in the ultimatum, which wastherefore ignored in later publications.

These trends can also be observed when the Romanian "violent annexation" of1918 and the "regime of terror" were discussed immediately after the annexation in1940. The contrast between the left bank—a "workers' paradise" of five-year plans,economic growth and cultural advancement—and Bessarabia, where the landlordsand the gendarmes ruled once again, was emphasized. According to communistjargon, the Romanian annexation in 1918 had meant a continuation of tsaristoppression. The word "national yoke" was, however, not used in connection with theRomanian rule in Bessarabia, which implied that the Moldavian myth was not yetconsidered.

In 1940, shortly after the annexation, Nartsov showed that he had not wastedhis time in Tiraspol when he published an article dealing at length with pre-revolutionary history—quoting Byzantine and Russian chronicles, tsarist publica-tions, and documents from the Odessa municipal archives. His goal was to presentan original, scholarly Soviet interpretation, rather than a defensive, politicizedreaction to the Romanian point of view.

Nartsov tried to prove that the indigenous population of Bessarabia and Trans-nistria consisted mainly of Slavs: according to him, the first Romanized colonistscame to Moldavia from Transylvania in the fourteenth century and found theterritory inhabited by a Slavic population. Nartsov then noted, in line with theultimatum, that at the end of the nineteenth century the Slavs, Ukrainians, andRuthenians comprised the majority in most of the Bessarabian districts. By stressingthe Slavic influence, Nartsov brushed aside the concept of the Moldavian nation andpointed out that most of the Moldavians were "assimilated Ukrainians." His vaguebut telling assertion that "the Slavic language played a decisive part in the creationof the Moldavian language" pointed in the same direction. The concept of theMoldavian nation was irrelevant in Nartsov's mixture of class struggle and Russiannationalism. From Nartsov's point of view, the Bessarabian people were reunited in1940 with the related (rodstvennye) peoples of the Soviet Union and not with "theirMoldavian brothers" on the left bank.38

Nartsov concluded his article with a detailed but nevertheless traditional narrationof the events of 1917-1918. With the support of the English and French imperialistsand using the Sfatul Tarii as a cover, the Romanian oligarchy prevented thecompletion of the revolutionary process and snatched Bessarabia away from Soviet

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Russia. Despite his thorough knowledge of Bessarabian history, Nartsov, likeRakovskii, appeared to be unaware of what was later to become a crucial dogma inSoviet historiography: Soviet power had been briefly established in Bessarabia on 14January 1918! He described the struggle against Romanian conquest and occupationas a struggle of peasants and workers against bourgeois nationalists without anynational aspect.

The Moldavian Myth Completed

During the years 1945—1985, the Moldavian myth predominated in the MoldavianSoviet Republic. The full-blown myth consisted of four parts: an independentMoldavian language, an independent Moldavian nation, an independent Moldavianstate, and an independent Moldavian culture. The linchpin of the myth was, ofcourse, the Moldavian nation. In Soviet theory each of the five Marxist socio-economic formations was related to a stage in the development of the ethnos: theoriginal tribes became nationalities under feudalism. In the capitalist period thenationalities became bourgeois nations, and under socialism they conveniently turnedinto socialist nations. This historical periodization hypothetically allows for threebasically different concepts of a Moldavian nation, depending on the assumedhistorical moment of its ethnogenesis: The Romanian-Moldavian split might befound in the feudal or in the capitalist period (or in the socialist era, as argued in theinterwar years).

In the 1950s, at the height of the Stalinist glorification of the Slavic and Russianrole in history, the first communist textbook on Moldavian history presented theappropriate view of the Moldavian ethnogenesis: in the Dark Ages, the RomanizedDacians living in the Dnestr-Danube-Carpathian region merged with the indigenousSlavic population. The union of the Dacians and the Southern Slavs resulted in theRomanian (or Wallachian) ethnogenesis. The union of the Dacians and the EasternSlavs resulted in the Moldavian ethnogenesis.39 This early split implied a consider-able difference between both nations and their languages. For the same reasons,some Moscow linguists seriously claimed that the Moldavian language was a Slaviclanguage or was about to develop from a Roman into a Slavic language.

In December 1951, linguists from Moscow and their colleagues from the Molda-vian Republic gathered in Chi§inau to discuss the implications of Stalin's remarks onlinguistics for the Moldavian language.40 The Moscow linguists rejected the assump-tion that the Moldavian language had a Slavic character as an absurdity and ascholarly disgrace. Even the assertion of linguistic independence was toned down,and the affinity between Romanian and Moldavian was now recognized. In fact, thereference of Soviet linguists to the two "East-Romance languages" represented acompromise between assertion of independence and complete identity of Moldavianand Romanian.41

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The conference of 1951 marked the beginning of a liberal phase in Moldavianlanguage policy. The Moldavian language was allowed to assimilate towards theliterary Romanian language, while Russification was toned down.42 The Cyrillicscript was maintained, but the Ukrainian and Russian influence on lexicon andgrammar subsided. Thereafter, the vulnerable myth of an independent Moldavianlanguage was maintained with great care. Linguists presented new research to provethe existence of an independent Moldavian language again and again.43 In 1976,Party Secretary Ivan Bodiul even had an interpreter in conversations with theRomanian leader Ceaujescu.

Parallel to the concept of Moldavian as an independent language related toRomanian, the view on Moldavian ethnogenesis also changed. The final Moldavian-Romanian separation had occurred neither in the Dark Ages under Slavic influencenor in the 1920s under the influence of socialist construction but, rather, in thenineteenth century under the influence of capitalism. Overall, the previously over-bearing Slavic and Russian role in Moldavian ethnogenesis and history was toneddown in the 1960s.

The cultural issue was the least important and, therefore, the last cornerstone ofthe myth to be constructed. The concept of a gradual consolidation of separateMoldavian and Romanian bourgeois nations since 1812 caused many problems andconfusion for the field of cultural studies. The assumption that the Moldavianethnogenesis occurred in the nineteenth century, under the influence of capitalism,allowed Chi§inau to "nationalize" cultural (and political) figures from the precedingcenturies of feudalism. Prior to 1812, the (whole) Moldavian Principality was simplyrecognized as the state of the Moldavians and the motherland of their culturalleaders. A prominent political and cultural figure like Dimitrie Cantemir, a Molda-vian ruler from the eighteenth century, who was important to the Balkan Enlighten-ment, had shown only shimmers of a national consciousness and had not beeninvolved in political activities that might have "incriminated" him as a Romanian"bourgeois nationalist."

The rehabilitation of nineteenth-century literary figures started in the early 1950sin order to create a suitable cultural heritage for the Moldavian Republic. The earliercondemnation of the classics was now labeled "nihilism." In the first half centuryafter the 1812 annexation, Bessarabia had not produced any writers of significance,and in the second half, cultural and national oppression in Bessarabia promptedwriters and poets born in Bessarabia to leave for either Moscow or Bucharest.44 Therigid communist dogma prescribed that the building of a Moldavian bourgeois nationstarted in 1812 and that the Bolsheviks found a full-grown Moldavian bourgeoisnation in 1917. All the rest was a matter of taste: those interested in political historypreferred an early date for the completion of the nationbuilding process and the finalseparation of the Romanian and Moldavian identities, usually "the second half of thenineteenth century" or 1859, the year of the Romanian unification. This logical butdogmatic definition implied that Mihail Eminescu and several other major literary

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figures who worked and lived on the right bank of the Prut in the late nineteenthcentury could not be incorporated into the Moldavian heritage. An earlier dateimplied a longer existence of the Moldavian nation prior to 1917 and a strongerMoldavian claim of state legitimacy. Those interested in cultural studies, however,gave preference to a later date, at the very end of the century. Such a periodizationallowed the inclusion of more nineteenth century writers and poets in the Moldaviannational cultural heritage.

Neither interpretation was, however, strictly applied in practice. The classificationof Moldavian literary figures in the second edition of the Greater Soviet Encyclo-pedia (1948-1960) was typically inconsistent. In principle, late nineteenth-centuryclassics from the right bank of the Prut belonged to both Moldavian and Romanianheritage, while those from the left bank belonged to Moldavian literature only. Theencyclopedia, however, listed some as Moldavian, others as Moldavian and Roma-nian, and Eminescu as only Romanian.45 More recent encyclopedias have listed allof the nineteenth-century classics as both Moldavian and Romanian.

The Twilight of the Moldavian Myth

The Gorbachev era marked the end of Moldavian communist historiography. Glas-nost and the communist interpretations of Moldavian history proved incompatible.Within a few years, the four crucial pillars of the myth were eliminated, and theedifice collapsed like a house of cards.

The first concept to come under attack was the Moldavian language, whichbecame a pivotal issue for the growing national and pro-perestroika movements inthe Moldavian Republic. For the nationalists, the national language—be it Romanianor Moldavian—was the main instrument for national revival, and for the reformersit was an effective instrument to dispute the conservative Russian (or Russified)nomenclature's claim to power.46 In 1988-1989, the political leadership in Chi§inaureluctantly recognized the Moldavian language as the state language of the republicand allowed the use of the Latin script.47 These concessions de facto boiled down toacknowledging that the Moldavian and Romanian languages were, in fact, identical.As a consequence, the idea of an independent Moldavian nation became untenableas well. The idea of a Moldavian nation with its own language was discredited, andthe Romanian interpretation of Moldavian history became dominant. Evidently, thethird pillar, the idea of an authentic Moldavian culture, could not be upheld either.The fourth pillar, Moldavian statehood, however, never lost its political reality.Although its borders had changed significantly more than once, Moldavia had beenan independent (or autonomous) national state separate from Romania for almost twocenturies. Consequently, the debate among historians on the origins and foundingyear of the Moldavian Soviet state continued even in the late 1980s as this stateseemed on the verge of disintegration.48

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CARVING A MOLDAVIAN IDENTITY OUT OF HISTORY

Reconstructing the Moldavian Identity

Soon after independence the Popular Front started to lose its mass support, most ofall because it pressed for immediate unification with Romania. Most Moldavians,however, learned to appreciate independence and realistically weigh the culturaladvantages of unification and its political and economic disadvantages.49

The champions of unification could fall back on the traditional Romanian national-ist and national-communist interpretations of Bessarabian history.50 The proponentsof independence, however, confront a much more difficult task. Although they"objectively" acknowledged the Romanian-ness of the Moldavian language, theyneeded a Moldavian national identity in order to legitimize Moldavian independentstatehood in the face of Transnistnan separatism and the rival concept of unificationwith Romania (not unlike their communist predecessors). In Moldavia, nationalindependence had preceded the construction of national state ideology. Whilecomposing a new interpretation of Moldavian history intended to foster Moldavianconsciousness and patriotic pride, the new regime must confront the older communist"scarecrows" in this field. As predicted two years ago: "Moldavian communisthistoriography may be dead, but the communist views on Moldavian history will bepart of the discursive field forever."51

The turnover of staff in historical science made the (re)construction of a Molda-vian identity and a national interpretation of history more difficult: the heavyweightsof communist historiography had discredited themselves with decades of dogmaticcommunist and Russian nationalist publications. By the mid-1990s most of them haddied or left for Tiraspol. Since the late 1980s, their positions had been taken byyounger Moldavian historians with pro-Romanian inclinations, who came to domi-nate the academic institutions and publishing. This left the regime virtually withoutacademic support for the construction of a consistent new national myth. Therefore,the president, Mircea Snegur, shouldered this task himself in a pioneering speech on5 February 1994.52

Snegur's speech was a shrewd mixture of old and new arguments. He depictedMoldavian independence as the will of the people and the Moldavian Republic as afatherland for all its inhabitants. The separatist movement in Tiraspol he brushedaside as "imperial revanchism," but took his time to distinguish his views from thoseof the Romanian nationalists in Chisinau and Bucharest. His main historical line ofargument was the "centuries-old state tradition of Moldavia," beginning with theMoldavian Principality of the fourteenth century. Unlike previous Soviet historianshe could also include in this tradition the Moldavian Republic created by the SfatulTarii in December 1917. He noted the common Roman ancestry of Romanians andMoldavians. Like Soviet historians had done before, he quoted medieval sources,referring to the inhabitants of the Principality as "Moldavians." Similarly, headmitted that Romanian and Moldavian were in essence one and the same language,but he also indicated (unspecified) peculiarities of the Moldavian tongue. Overall, he

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avoided the issue of the Romanian-ness of the Moldavian nation and language andhighlighted the pride and traditions of the Moldavians as well as their past andpresent statehood.

He criticized the opportunistic attitude of the republican historians: having cham-pioned the concept of the Slavic roots of the Moldavian nation for decades, they, allof a sudden, had become ardent defendants of its Romanian-ness. Moreover, theydisregarded their task to "proclaim the history of the Moldavian land and itsinhabitants" to the people. Unlike their president, the historians had obviously missedthe signs of the times. Snegur himself was aware that nations do not grow; they haveto be created. In his speech he explicitly deplored, that "historical realities do notcreate nations" but seemed convinced that he might lend a helping hand.

NOTES

1. Adapted from the title: Gh. I. Brätianu, Ein Rätsel und ein Wunder der Geschichte: Dasrumänische Volk (A Mystery and a Miracle in History: The Romanian People) 1927(rpt. Munich: Rumänische Studiengruppe, 1968).

2. Cited in: K. Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism. Identity and Cultural Politics inCeauşescu's Romania (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 302.

3. A. I. Boldur, La bessarabie et Ies relations russo-roumaines. (La question bessarabienne etle droit international) (Bessarabia and Russian-Romanian Relations. [The BessarabianQuestion and International Law]) (Paris: Librairie Universitaire, 1927; rpt. Munich: VerlagRumänische Studien, 1973), pp. 48-57.

4. G. F. Jewsbury, The Russian Annexation of Bessarabia: 1774-1828. A Study of ImperialExpansion (Boulder: East European Quarterly, 1976).

5. B. Jelavich, Russia and the Romanian National Cause 1858-1859 (Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press, n.d.), pp. 103-120.

6. W. Feldman, "The Theoretical Basis for the Definition of the Moldavian Nationality,"in R. S. Clem, ed., The Soviet West. Interplay between Nationality and Social Organization(New York: Preager Publishers, 1975), pp. 46-59.

7. T. Ionescu, La Politique étrangère de la Roumanie (Romanian Foreign Policy) (Bucharest:1891) cited in: Wim P. van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question in Communist Historiography.Nationalist and Communist Poitics and History-Writing (Boulder: East EuropeanMonographs, 1994), p. 53, note 51.

8. M. Raeff, "Patterns of Russian Imperial Policy towards the Nationalities," in E. Allworth, ed.,Soviet Nationality Problems (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), pp. 22-42.

9. See, for instance: N. Titulescu, 'Two Neighbours of Russia and Their Policies I. Roumaniaand Bessarabia," The Nineteenth Century and After (1924), pp. 791-803.

10. Wim P. van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question, p. 154.11. Entsiklopedicheskii slovar, 1st edn (St. Petersburg: Tipo-Litografiya I. A. Efrona, 1891),

Vol. VI, pp. 604-614.12. Raeff, "Patterns of Russian Imperial Policy," pp. 22-42.13. See the charts based on the original membership list of the Sfatul Tärii in my dissertation:

Wim P. van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question, pp. 378-379; I. Livezeanu, "Moldavia,1917-1990: Nationalism and Internationalism Then and Now," Armenian Review, Vol. 43,Nos 2-3, 1990, pp. 153-193.

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14. See: P. M. Kozhuchar and I. I. Shpak, eds, Istoriia, arkheologiia, ètnografiia Moldavii.Ukazatel' sovetskoi literatury 1918-1968 gg. (Kishinev: Kartia Moldoveniaskè, 1973),Vol. I, Nos 1343-1346.

15. Ch. Rakovskii, Rumyniia i Bessarabiia. K semiletiiu anneksii Bessarabii (Moscow: IzdanieLitizdata, 1925).

16. Rakovskii, Rumyniia i Bessarabiia, pp. 9-19.17. In 1925, other authors also stressed the jumbled origins of the population of Bessarabia. See:

N. S. Dostian, "Dunaiskie kniazhestva v russkoi publitsistike kontsa XVIII i nachale XIXveka," Revue Roumaine d'Histoire, Vol. 20, No. 1, 1981, pp. 31-41.

18. Rakovskii, Rumyniia i Bessarabiia, pp. 34-41, 52-55.19. Rakovskii's book is not listed in: Istoriia, arkheologiia, ètnografiia Moldavii, Vol. I.20. See, for instance, L. N. Aleksandri, Bessarabiia i bessarabskii vopros (Moscow:

Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo, 1924).21. M. Bruchis, Rossiia, Rumyniia i Bessarabiia (1812-1918-1924-1940) (Jerusalem: Graph

Press, 1979), pp. 156-189.22. Istoriia, arkheologiia, ètnografiia Moldavii, Vol. I; Wim P. van Meurs, The Bessarabian

Question, p. 375.23. Ia M. Kopanskii, Obshchestvo Bessarabtsev v SSSR i Soiuzy Bessarabskikh Èmigrantov

(1924-1940) (Kishinev: Shtiinca, 1978), pp. 96-102.24. O. Iu. Tarasov, "Iz istorii organizacii pervykh nauchnykh tsentrov v sovetskoi Moldavii," in

I. K. Vartichan, A. M. Lazarev, T. I. Malinovskii, et al., eds, XXV s" ezd KPSS i problemyrazvitiia nauki (Kishinev: Shtiinca, 1977), pp. 20-30.

25. V. S. Kiriiak, "Lekhttsir, Samuil Ruvimovich," Sovetskaia Moldaviia. Kratkaia èntsiklopediia(Kishinev: Kartia Moldoveniaskè, 1981), p. 344; "Nartsov, Naum Arianovich," SovetskaiaMoldaviia. Kratkaia èntsiklopediia, p. 425; Tarasov, "Iz istorii organizatsii," pp. 20-30;N. P. Smochina, Republica Moldoveneasca a Sovietilor (The Moldavian Soviet Republic)(Bucharest: Cartea Romaneasca, 1938), pp. 21-25.

26. See, for instance, Istoriia, arkheologiia, ètnografiia Moldavii, Vol. I, Nos 1343-1364,1783-1794.

27. E. Bagrov, ed., Interventia rotnina in Basarabia. Culegeri de materiale si documente(1917-1918) (The Romanian Intervention in Bessarabia. A Collection of Materials andDocuments) (Tiraspol: Editura de Stat a Moldovei, 1933), Vol. I.

28. Interventia romina in Basarabia, Vol. I, pp. 14-20.29. See also: C. King, The Politics of Language in Moldova, 1924-1994 (Diss. Oxford

University, 1995), pp. 69-140.30. M. Bruchis, Nations-Nationalities-People: A Study of the Nationalities Policy of the

Communist Party in Soviet Moldavia (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1984), p. 167.Further research in the archives of the Comintern is necessary for an evaluation of the roleof this commission in the construction of a Moldavian identity.

31. R. R. King, A History of the Romanian Communist Party (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press,1980), pp. 14-18.

32. J. Degras, ed., Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press,1953), Vol. m, pp. 458-459.

33. A. M. Lazarev, Moldavskaia sovetskaia gosudarstvennost' i bessarabskii vopros (Kishinev:Kartia Moldoveniaskè, 1974), pp. 26-31, 121, 126.

34. Dokumenty vneshnei politiki SSSR (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1958-1959), Vol. II, p. 153;Vol. IV, pp. 483-488.

35. N. Nartsov, "Istoricheskie sud'by Bessarabii i Moldavii. (Kratkii ocherk)," Istorik Marksist,Vol. 9, 1940, pp. 85-98; Sovetskaia Bessarabiia i sovetskaia Bukovina (Moscow:Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo Politicheskoi Literatury, 1940).

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36. N. Nartsov, Sovetskaia Bessarabiia i sovetskaia Bukovina, p. 14.37. In the section on Bukovina, however, the Ukrainian majority in northern Bukovina and the

national oppression by the Romania government are mentioned explicitly. SovetskaiaBessarabiia i sovetskaia Bukovina, pp. 15-26.

38. N. Nartsov, "Istoricheskie sud'by," pp. 87-90, 98. The use of the plural "peoples" and theterm "Bessarabian people" instead of "Moldavian people" shows the intended connotation tobe based on class rather than nation.

39. A. D. Udal'tsov and L. V. Cherepnin, eds, Kurs istorii Moldavii, Vol. I (Kishinev: ShkoalaSovetikè, 1949), pp. 35-46.

40. A. Kleess, "Rumänisch und Moldauisch" (Romanian and Moldavian), Osteuropa, Vol. 5,No. 4, 1955, pp. 281-284.

41. M. Bruchis, One Step Back, Two Steps Forward: On the Language Policy of the CommunistParty of the Soviet Union in the National Republics (Moldavian: A Look Back, a Survey, andPerspectives, 1924-1980) (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1982), pp. 97-116;E. Lozovan, "La Linguistique roumaine de 1952 à 1954" (Romanian Linguistics from 1952until 1954), Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie, Vols 71, Nos 5-6, 1955, pp. 391-407.

42. N. Dima, "Moldavians or Romanians?" in R. S. Clem, ed., The Soviet West. Interplaybetween Nationality and Social Organization (New York: Preager Publishers, 1975),pp. 31-45.

43. N. Timiras, "The Idiom of Bessarabia and Its Latinity and Identity with the RomanianLanguage," in M. Manoliu-Manea, ed., The Tragic Plight of a Border Area: Bassarabia andBucovina (Los Angeles: Humboldt State University Press, 1983), pp. 143-166.

44. K. Heitmann, "Rumänische Sprache und Literatur in Bessarabien und Transnistrien. (Diesogenannte moldauische Sprache und Literatur)" (Romanian Language and Literature inBessarabia and Transnistria. [The So-called Moldavian Language and Literature]), Zeitschriftfür Romanische Philologie, Vol. 81, Nos 1-2, 1965, pp. 102-156; Kleess, "Rumänisch undMoldauisch," pp. 281-284.

45. Lazarev, Moldavskaia sovetskaia gosudarstvennost', pp. 526-537.46. W. Crowther, "The Politics of Ethno-National Mobilization: Nationalism and Reform in

Soviet Moldavia," Russian Review, Vol. 50, No. 2, 1991, pp. 183-202.47. "O statuse gosudarstvennogo iazyka Moldavksoi SSR," Kommunist Moldavii, Vol. 10, 1989,

pp. 6-15; V. Socor, "Moldavian Proclaimed Official Language in the Moldavian SSR," RadioLiberty-Report on the USSR, Vol. 1, No. 38, 1989, pp. 13-15.

48. Wim P. van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question, pp. 204, 269-273; ch. 6 in: Wim P. vanMeurs, Die Gestrigen heute. Reflexionen der russischen Diaspora in Lettland und Moldovaüber ihre Geschichte und Identität, 1985-1994 (Yesterday's Men. Reflections of the RussianDiaspora in Latvia and Moldova on Its History and Identity, 1985-1994) [forthcoming].

49. V. Socor, "Why Moldova Does Not Seek Reunification," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty-Research Report, Vol. 1, No. 5, 1992, pp. 27-33.

50. Actually, up until early 1994, post-communist Moldavian historiography was dominated byreprints of the works of pre-war Romanian historians.

51. Wim P. van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question, p. 204.52. M. Snegur, "Respublika Moldova—strana vsekh ee grazhdan," Nezavisimaia Moldova,

10 February 1994, pp. 1-2. See also: P. P. Moldovan, Moldovenii în istorie (Chişinău:Polygraf-Service, 1994); Z. Ornea, "O carte ticăloasă," România Literară, No. 21, 1994, p. 9.

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