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The thesis about the two distinct peoples - Moldovan and Romanian – has been brought back into discussion by the Russian media in the context in which the Chisinau Parliament voted a law stipulating that the phrase “Moldovan language” shall be replaced in the legislation of the Republic of Moldova with “Romanian language”. Russian propaganda claims that the measure - taken following a decision by the Constitutional Court - is intended to prepare the union of the Republic of Moldova with Romania.
NEWS: “PAS continuously brings the Republic of Moldova closer to the union with Romania. After changing the name of the language, we can expect that the ruling party will also change the name of the country. It would be very convenient for Bucharest, because the disappearance of Moldova from the world map would also solve domestic issues in Romania, where approximately 7 million Moldovans live. The Romanianization process has already been going on for a hundred years. People have been inoculated the idea that there is no Moldova, but Bessarabia, and it should not be a separate state, Nicolae Pascaru said.
At the same time, he stressed that the history of the Moldovan statehood is richer than that of the Romanians. The Moldavian Voivodeship was documented in the 14th century, while Romania was created in 1859. There have been other attempts at union, but they failed.
Romanians call Moldovans Russian, because they know what role the Russian Empire played for Moldova, Pascaru claims. Chisinau was built by the Russian Empire. We have the right to our own identity, but that bothers Bucharest”.
NARRATIVES: 1. The PAS government wants to eliminate the Moldovan language because it is preparing the union of the Republic of Moldova with Romania. 2. Moldovans and Romanians are different peoples. 3. Romania and its agents are trying to eliminate the idea of the Moldovan people because the Romanians do not want to lose the part of Moldova they occupied. 4. The Russian Empire/Russia played a civilizing role for the territory of the Republic of Moldova and built and developed Chisinau, unlike Romania, which did not make any efforts to develop Bessarabia.
LOCAL CONTEXT/ETHOS: The existence of two distinct peoples - the Moldavians and the Romanians, who speak two different languages, is a thesis strongly promoted by Soviet historiography. The USSR also created a so-called autonomous republic on the left bank of the Dniester River , where Moldovanism was promoted, and prepared the re-annexation of today's territory of the Republic of Moldova. The former president of Moldova, the communist Vladimir Voronin, used to say that “the Moldovan language is the mother of the Romanian language”. He also demanded rights for the “Moldavian minority” in Romania and promoted an organization of Moldovans in Romania.
The union of the two Romanian principalities in 1859 is presented as an annexation of the Land of Moldavia and it is suggested that the Republic of Moldova would have the right to claim the return of Moldova located on the right bank of the Prut River.
Romania is presented in the Russian press, but also by some of the politicians and mass media institutions in the Republic of Moldova, as a vindictive state, with territorial claims over the Republic of Moldova and some regions in the southeast of Ukraine.
They were brought back to the fore after the Chisinau Parliament voted a law that excludes the phrase “Moldovan language” from the legislation.
PURPOSE: To bring back into discussion the thesis about the existence of two distinct peoples - Moldavian and Romanian, and even emphasize that the Moldavian one is superior. To feed the phobias of a part of the population towards a supposed union of the Republic of Moldova with Romania, promoted by the pro-European government in Chisinau.
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: By adopting the law that eliminates the phrase “Moldovan language”, the Moldovan Parliament enforces a decision issued by the Constitutional Court in December 2013, according to which the text of the Declaration of Independence, which establishes the Romanian language as the state language, prevails over the text of the Constitution (voted in 1994 by a center-left parliament) in which the state language is called “Moldovan”.
Romania was the first country to recognize the independence of the Republic of Moldova, and even if over the years there have always been discussions about a possible union, this topic is not discussed at official level either in Bucharest or in Chisinau.
The Moldovanist theory, which appeared during the Tsarist Empire and was intensively promoted during the Soviet period, represented one of the elements of propaganda intended to justify the annexation of a part of the territory inhabited by ethnic Romanians. However, this thesis is rejected by historians and linguists on both banks of the Prut.
The promotion of the narrative about two different peoples and languages was initially done to motivate Moscow's steps for the retrocession of Bessarabia after the union with Romania in 1918, and then to explain the existence of the two countries that share the same culture and language – Romania and the Republic of Moldova.
In Romania, there is no “Moldovanist” trend to support the theory that those living on the territory of historical Moldavia are a different people. Moldovans in Romania identify themselves as Romanians.
The claim that the city of Chisinau was developed / built by the Russians is also false (and not new). Chisinau was named the administrative capital after the territorial abduction of 1812 and the annexation to the Russian Empire, but it wasn't until 1873, when Bessarabia became a governorate, that the city began to develop. Chisinau was modernized mainly thanks to the mayor Carol Schmidt, who was head of the city for 25 years, between 1877 and 1903, and radically changed its appearance following the collaboration with the architect Alexandru Bernardazzi.
Chisinau kept developing quite intensively in the interwar period , under the Romanian administration. Lots of comfortable houses, urban villas, buildings with apartments, very well-designed schools were built in the city, and many libraries, printing houses, theaters were opened. It was also then that a series of enterprises began to operate, the first mechanized mill, a bread factory, a sausage factory, a candy factory, shoe, knitwear, fur factories, and exhibitions of industrial goods and agricultural machinery were organized. In 1919, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry was founded in Chisinau, the banking sector began to develop, with the establishment of the Bank of Bessarabia, and the first airport was inaugurated in 1921.
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