Moldovenism

Moldovenism is a political term used to refer to the support and promotion of the Moldovan identity and Moldovan culture. The term is used primarily by the opponents of such ideas.

Some of its supporters ascribe this identity to the medieval Principality of Moldavia. Others, in order to explain the current differences between Romanian-speaking inhabitants of the two banks of the Prut river, ascribe it to the long incorporation of Bessarabia in the Russian empire and the USSR. The opponents, on the contrary, claim that Moldovans and Romanians are a single ethnic group and that the Moldovan identity was artificially created by the Soviet Union.

Principality of Moldavia was an independent kingdom from 1346–1859 when it was forced into a union with the Principality of Wallachia which was a vassal of the Ottoman Empire at the time seeking to spread it influence and to undermine the Russian Empire in the region

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

In 1812 the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire signed the Treaty of Bucharest, by which Russia annexed the eastern part of the medieval Principality of Moldavia. This territory became known as Bessarabia. Between 1859 and 1866, Principality of Moldavia and the neighbouring Principality of Wallachia united into a single country called Romania. In 1917, when the Russian Empire was disintegrating, a Moldavian Democratic Republic was formed in Bessarabia. In 1918, after the Romanian army gained control of the region, Sfatul Țării proclaimed the independence of the Moldavian Republic and, later, voted for the union with Romania. The Soviet Russia contested the outcome of these events and, in May 1919, proclaimed the Bessarabian Soviet Socialist Republic as a government in exile. After the Soviet-organized Tatarbunary Uprising failed, in 1924 a Moldavian ASSR (MASSR) was created within the Ukrainian SSR, just east of the river Dniester that then marked the boundary between Romania and the Soviet Union.

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