The language of the Romanian minority has been forcefully imposed in the Republic of Moldova, pro-Russian propaganda writes, repeating the false thesis about the existence of two nations, Moldovans and Romanians, who speak different languages.
NEWS: The Republic of Moldova is the only country in the world where the language of an ethnic minority (Romanian) is the official state language, one of the leaders of the political party “Civic Congress”, Iurie Muntean, pointed out.
“The language of the Romanian ethnic minority in Moldova (7.9% of the country’s population) is the only constitutional state language in the country”, Muntean wrote on his Telegram channel, commenting on the results of the census.
At the same time, the language of the ethnic majority (Moldovan, which was identified as the mother tongue of 77.2% of the country’s population) was excluded from the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova. Also, the languages of other ethnic minorities are not included as state languages in the Constitution of Moldova.
NARRATIVES: 1. Romanians and Moldovans are different nations, speaking distinct languages, Romanian and Moldovan. 2. (implied) Moldovans were denationalized and deprived of their own language by their neighbors across the Prut.
PURPOSE: To bring back into discussion identity issues in the Republic of Moldova, ahead of the parliamentary election that will most likely take place in fall this year, in order to further divide society.
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: The thesis of Moldovenism, which emerged during the Tsarist Empire and was widely circulated during the Soviet era, is one of the propaganda elements designed to justify the annexation of part of the territory inhabited by ethnic Romanians.
Soviet narratives about the existence of two distinct peoples (Moldovan and Romanian) are not supported by historical documents, which attest to the formation of the Romanian people and language on the territory of the former kingdom of Dacia following its conquest by the Roman Empire.
The promotion of the narrative about two different peoples and languages was initially meant to legitimize Moscow's efforts to recapture Bessarabia after the union with Romania in 1918, and later to explain the existence of two countries that share the same culture and language - Romania and the Republic of Moldova.
The same narratives are still promoted to this day by certain pro-Russian politicians. However, the same statistics Iurie Muntean refers to shows that the number of people who identify themselves as Romanian speakers has increased significantly compared to the previous census of 2014, from 23 to 31%, while the number of people who still call the language “Moldovan” has gone down.
It should also be noted that, according to census findings, 49% of the population identified “Moldovan” as their mother tongue, not 77.2%, as Sputnik claims. Most likely, the figures would change significantly if the overwhelmingly pro-European diaspora had also taken part in the census, as the results of the election last fall show.
BACKGROUND: The existence of two distinct peoples, Moldovans and Romanians, who speak two different languages, is a thesis intensively promoted by Soviet historiography. The USSR also created a so-called autonomous republic on the left bank of the Dniester River, where Moldovenism was promoted and prepared the re-annexation of the territory of today's Republic of Moldova. The former communist president, Vladimir Voronin, said that “the Moldovan language is the mother of the Romanian language”. He also demanded rights for the “Moldovan minority” in Romania and promoted an organization of Moldovans in Romania.
The identity issue related to the name of the language and the local population dates back to the National Liberation Movement preceding the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The 1994 Constitution voted by a left-wing majority Parliament stipulates that the official language is “Moldovan”. However, the Constitutional Court in Chișinău ruled in 2013 that the text of the Declaration of Independence, which establishes Romanian as the state language, prevails over the text of the Constitution (voted in 1994 by a center-left parliament) where the state language is called “Moldovan”. In March 2023, the Parliament in Chișinău voted the legislative amendments resulting from that ruling.
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