Moldovenism

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Moldovenism is a term sometimes used to refer to the political view that asserts a Moldovans to be a distinct nation separate from Romanians. It is used primarily by critics of such views.

Moldovenism in independent Moldova

The debate surrounding the nationality of the Moldovans has resurfaced after the collapse of the USSR. One side argues that Moldovans have always been Romanians, with the region's modern history separate from Romania. The other side emphasizes the distinctiveness of Moldovans. Some argue that Moldovans have always been separate from Wallachians and that the Moldovans from Moldova and Romania thus form a common ethnic group distinct from the other peoples known as Romanians; others state that the Moldovans from Bessarabia have changed due to their long isolation from Romania and that nearly two centuries of political separation was "more than ample time for each country to develop its own separate national identity"

A 2001 survey by American professor William Crowther, showed that 87% of the Romance-speaking population of Moldova considers itself "Moldovan", rather than the "Romanian".

On 19 December 2003, the Moldovan Parliament, dominated by the Communist Party of Moldova, adopted a document called "The Concept on National Policy of the Republic of Moldova", which defines the official nationality policy of Moldova. The document revolves around the following ideas:

there are two different peoples (Romanians and Moldovans) that live in both Moldova and Romania, speaking two different languages, Romanian and Moldovan.
Romanians are an ethnic minority in Moldova.
the Republic of Moldova is the rightful successor of the medieval Principality of Moldova.

This document has been criticised by the pro-Romanian press and authors for being "anti-European" and also "contradicting Article V of the Moldovan Constitution", that states that "no ideology may be pronounced as official ideology of the State".

Moldovan language in the Soviet Union

Autochtonization

The territory of Bessarabia which forms most of the present-day Republic of Moldova, historically the eastern part of the principality of Moldavia, was annexed from the Ottoman Empire by Imperial Russia in 1812 and remained a Russian territory until the October Revolution of 1917. In 1918, Bessarabia was united with Romania.

With the creation in 1924 of the Moldavian ASSR within the Ukrainian SSR, the Soviet authorities declared the variety spoken by the majority of Moldavians to be "Moldavian language", for the purpose of giving the region its own identity separate from Romania.

The intellectual elites of MASSR were asked to create a Moldovan literary language, distinct from Romanian. The local language, although distinct from standard Romanian, was less different from it than some dialects within Romania. Pavel Chior, the MASSR People's Commissar of Education argued that standard literary Romanian borrowed too many French-language words, making it incomprehensible to the peasants both in MASSR and in Romania and that these differences should be used to empasize the differences between the "ruling class" and of the "exploited class".

Soviet linguist M. V. Sergievsky studied the language in the MASSR and he mapped two dialects, of which one was similar to the language of Bessarabia, being chosen as the standard, to pave the way for the "liberation of the Bessarabians". Gabriel Buciuşcanu, a Socialist Revolutionary member of Sfatul Ţării who opposed the union with Romania, wrote in 1925 a grammar, but it was considered too similar to Romanian grammars and it was quickly pulled out of the circulation.

As a result of the transfers of the territory and the population movements, including deportations of locals and encouraged immigration from the rest of the USSR, by the mid-20th century, the number of Russian speakers increased. Also, during Soviet rule, Moldovan speakers were encouraged to learn the Russian language as a prerequisite for access to higher education, social status and political power. All this contributed to proliferation of Russian loanwords in spoken Moldovan.

Romanizators and autochtonists

In the 1920s there was a dispute between supporters ("Romanizators" or "Romanists") and opponents ("autochtonists", Russian: самобытники) of the convergence of the Moldavian and Romanian languages.

In particular, the "autochtonists" strove to base the literary Moldovan language on local dialects from the left bank of the Dniester. Neologisms were created to cover technical areas that had no native Moldovan equivalent.

In February 1932, Moldovan communists received a directive from the Communist Party of Ukraine to switch Moldovan writing to the Latin alphabet. This was part of the massive Latinization campaign of minority languages in the USSR, based on the theory of Soviet linguist Nikolai Marr postulating the convergence to a single world language, expected to be a means of communication in the future classless society (Communism). This directive was passively sabotaged by the "autochtonist" majority, until Stanislav Kosior (General Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party) and several Moldovan communists visited Stalin — who reportedly insisted on faster Latinization with the ultimate goal of the convergence of Moldavian and Romanian cultures, hinting at the possibility of a future reunion of Moldova and Romania. Nevertheless, resistance to Romanization persisted, and after 1933, a number of prominent "autochtonists" were repressed, their books destroyed, and their neologisms banned.

After the infamous February-March (1937) VKP(b) Central Committee Plenum, which escalated the Great Purge, both "romanizators" and "autochtonists" were declared "imperialist spies": "autochtonists", because they sabotaged the Latinization, and "romanizators", because they were "agents of boyar Romania" ("Боярская Румыния", i.e. anti-Soviet).

In February 1938, Moldovan communists issued a declaration transferring Moldovan writing to the Cyrillic alphabet once again, which in August 1939 was made into the law of the Moldavian ASSR and after 1940, the MSSR. The motivation was that the Latinization was used by "bourgeois-nationalist elements" to "distance the Moldavian populace from the Ukrainian and Russian ones, with the ultimate goal of the separation of Soviet Moldavia from the USSR".

Moldovan in Soviet Moldova

In June 1940 Bessarabia came under Soviet rule. A year later, in 1941, Romania invaded the Soviet Union as part of Operation Barbarossa and retook Bessarabia, along with the territory between the Dniester and Bug rivers. These territories were taken back by the Soviet Union 3 years later in 1944, and remained under Soviet administration until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

In 1956, during the rehabilitation of the victims of Stalinist repression, a special report was issued about the state of the Moldavian language, which stated, in part, that the discussions of 1920-30s between the two tendencies were mostly non-scientific, since there were very few linguists in the republic, and that the grammar and the basic lexicon of literary Romanian and Moldovan languages are identical, while differences are secondary and nonessential. Once again, the planned convergence of the Romanian and Moldovan languages was approved, bearing in mind the political situation in the People's Republic of Romania.

Some Soviet linguists denied the existence of a Moldovan language.

In the 1970s, a new generation of Soviet linguists debated about Moldovan being a different language. For example, one linguist, Iliasenco, compared the Romanian and Moldovan translations of a Brezhnev speech from Russian and used them as a proof for the existence of two different languages. Linguist Michael Bruchis analysed this claim, and noticed that all the words of both translations are found in both dictionaries. Also, Iliasenco implied "Moldovan" preferred synthetic while "Romanian" preferred analytic syntagms. However, this claim was also proven wrong, as a book of Nicolae Ceauşescu (the political leader of Romania at the time) uses mostly "Moldovan" synthetic syntagms, while a book by Ivan Bodyul (the secretary of the Moldavian SSR) uses mostly "Romanian" analytic syntagms. Bruchis' conclusion was that both translations were within the limits of Romanian language.

Notes

"Moldovan: An Identity but not a Language"
Charles King, "The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture", Hoover Press, 2000, pg. 159
Gribincea A., Grecu, M. The Concept on National Policy of the Republic of Moldova UNHCR.
Grenoble 2003, pp 89-93
Ana Coreţchi, Ana Pascaru, Cynthia Stevens, The Republic of Moldova: dimensions of the Gagauz socio-linguistic model, Linguapax Institute.
Elizabeth Blackwell, The Sovietization of Moldova, College of Political Science, James Madison University
A Country Study: Moldova (Language section), Library of the US Congress.
King, p.64
King, p.64
Ziua, 22 noiembrie 2007: Acum o jumatate de secol, doi renumiti profesori ai Universitatii din Moscova, romanistul R.A. Budagov si slavistul S.B. Bernstein, au trimis revistei Voprosi jazakoznanija (Probleme de lingvistica) articolul cu privire la unitatea de limba romano-moldoveneasca, articol ce a fost publicat abia in 1988, in revista Nistru. Cei doi savanti aratau in mod clar ca s-au irosit multe forte si mult timp pentru a demonstra teza eronata cum ca moldovenii si romanii vorbesc limbi romanice inrudite, dar diferite. Dovezi in favoarea acestei teze n-au existat si nu pot exista", se arata in comunicat.
Michael Bruchis. The Language Policy of the CPSU and the Linguistic Situation in Soviet Moldavia, in Soviet Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1. (Jan., 1984), pp. 118-119.

References

Argentina Gribincea, Mihai Grecu Moldova: Situation analysis and trend assessment commissioned by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, October 2004

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