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II Debates/Dezbateri
Was the Soviet Union an Empire? A view from
Chiinu
1
A fost oare Uniunea Sovietic un imperiu? O privire din Chii-
nu
Igor CAU
Abstract
Te article focuses on the concepts of empire, national identity and Soviet nationalities
policy in the framework of center-periphery relations in the USSR. Te author illustrates
through various examples why Soviet policy in general and in particular in the Moldavi-
an SSR resembled the policies pursued by other classical empires in the national peripher-
ies. Special attention is paid to linguistic aspects, Russication, and the degree of national
identity accepted by Moscow in the former Moldavian SSR especially in the context of the
Soviet-Romanian dispute over the Bessarabian question. As one of the main criteria of
measuring discrimination is the percentage of the local population ethnic Romanians
represented in various domains, the author quotes archival data in this regard. Among
the conclusions is that on the economic level and more exactly representation of the ethnic
Romanians as top mangers of industrial enterprises, one can conclude that discrimina-
tion existed and it speaks of the imperial character of the Soviet Union.
Keywords: Empire, Nations, Colonialism, Soviet Moldavia, Soviet nationalities
policy, center-periphery relations, political elites, economic elites, Eminescu, Stephen
the Great, propaganda, Big brother syndrome, local nationalism, Great Power chau-
vinism, Russication, Russia, Ukraine
Ideological crisis, economic failure and the nationalities problem are usually in-
voked as the main causes of the Soviet collapse. Tere are however scholars, such
as Victor Zaslavsky, who argue that the nationalities policies and imperial character
of the Soviet state are the main cause of the demise of USSR.
2
Other authors distin-
guish between the systemic crisis of the Communist regime in the Soviet Union and
1
A slightly revisited version of this article has been published in Russian in the Moscow-based jour-
nal , vol. 76, 4/2011. Available at http://www.nlobooks.ru/node/1134
2
Victor Zaslavsky, Collapse of Empire causes: Soviet Union, in Karen Barkey and Mark von
Hagen, eds., After Empire. Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building: The Soviet Union and the
Russian, Ottoman and Habsburg Empires, Boulder, Co.: Westview, 1997, p. 73-98.
278
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the crisis of Soviet federalism.
3
What is sure however, is that the Soviet collapse was
less violent than expected, and especially surprising when compared to the large-
scale employment of state violence during its history. Tat was due to the fact that
political secessionism on the part of the national republics coincided with the desire
of the leadership of the Russian Republic personied by Yeltsin to liquidate the
Union Center as well as Gorbachevs unwillingness to use force on a large scale.
In 1990-1991, at the level of perceptions, the national republics to a lesser degree the
Central Asian ones and the Russian Republic felt they were victims of the unjust redis-
tribution of resources and the unequal system of economic exchange. In other words, at
the level of perceptions, nobody was satised with the situation and apparently approved
the demise of the Soviet Union. At the level of objective, measurable variables the abso-
lute majority of Russians from Russia and from the non-Russian republics voted for the
signing of the new Union Treaty in the federal referendum held in March 1991. On the
other hand, the Baltic republics, Moldavia, Georgia and Armenia decided to boycott the
referendum, as it was anticipated that Moscow could use the vote of Russians and Rus-
sian speaking minorities as a motive to impose the signing of the new Union Treaty.
4

Te most authoritative and well documented account of the Soviet Nationalities
Policy albeit covering only the rst two decades of the existence of the USSR has
been written by Terry Martin. Martins book stipulates that the Soviet Union was
the rst Armative Action Empire, which codied and institutionalized ethnicities,
consolidating and even inventing in some cases alphabets for certain tribes, pro-
moting ethnic cadres and intelligentsia in their own national territories. Tis was
envisaged as a strategy of Lenin and Stalin to ght against and control a competing
political ideology of mass mobilization nationalism that was viewed as respon-
sible for the liquidation of four empires afer the First World War. In this sense in
the 1920s there was promoted the policy of korenizatsia, called by Stalin national-
izatsia, i.e. positive discrimination of non-Russians in order to convince them that
in national terms the USSR was not a continuation of the Tsarist Empire. In early
1930s however, with the start of mass industrialization and collectivization and the
abandonment of NEP, korenizatsia was relegated to the role of a secondary policy.
Instead, one witnesses a slow rehabilitation of Russian Great Power nationalism, to
be strengthened on the eve of Second World War and especially during the war.
5

3
Andrea Graziosi, Histoire de lURSS, Paris: Presse Universitaire de France, 2010, p. 500-501; Mark
Kramer, Te Collapse of East European Communismand the Repercussion within the Soviet Union,
in Te Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 5, No. 4, 2003, p. 178-256; vol. 6. No. 4, 2004, p. 3-64.
4
. . , . . , , 1938-2002, : , 2003, . 373.
5
David Brandenberger, It is imperative to Advance Russian Nationalism as First Priority: De-
bates within Stalinist Ideological Establishment, 1941-1945, in Ronald Suny and Terry Martin
(eds.), A State of Nations: Empire of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and
Stalin, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 275-300.
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Tere is not yet so detailed and documented a study on the Soviet Nationalities
Policy afer 1945 as Terry Martins book on the interwar period. However, one as-
sumes and Martin is admitting it implicitly that till the end of the Soviet Union
local nationalism, not Great Russian nationalism was perceived by Moscow as the
greatest danger to the cohesion and the very existence of the USSR.
Another important theoretical contribution to the study of Soviet Nationalities
policy has been made by Rogers Brubaker. His point is that Soviet Union institution-
alized nationhood, but at the same time tried to wither away any political content
of what the nation means, according to Stalins adagio national in form, socialist
in content. Another interesting and useful distinction Brubaker makes is related to
the institutionalization of two contradictory paradigms in the Soviet nationalities
policy: the rst one based on the collective and territorial principle and the second
one on the personal and ethno-cultural one. Te former referred to the myriad of
Soviet ethnicities that had the opportunity to enjoy national rights such as schools
in their language, newspapers, journals etc. only in their own national territory. Te
latter concerned the Russians who enjoyed access and privilege to Russian schools
and all other national rights in all parts of the Soviet Union, not only in the Russian
Federation.
6
Even though the ocial policy in national Union republics was bilin-
gualism, Russians were not supposed to know the language of the titular nationality.
Mark Beissinger, an American researcher on ethnic mass mobilization in the
Soviet Union in the late 1980s-early 1990s
7
mentions in his turn the pivotal role
played by the Soviet state in fuzzing the boundary between state and empire and in
pioneering forms of non-consensual control and denes USSR as the most strik-
ing example of informal empire. He also insists on the idea that one should under-
stand empire as claim rather than as things and even though the Soviet Union did
not claim to be an empire, the outcome was rather the contrary and empire implies
today illegitimate and non-consensual rule
8
.
How do the above mentioned theories of Soviet Union as empire relate to the
Moldavian case? What was the character of relations between Moscow and the
Chiinu authorities, and to what extent can they be dened as imperial and in
what sense is it dicult to do so?
It is well known that Soviet historiography and propaganda claimed that Russia
and Moldavia had century old relations. It was supposed that at least two medieval
6
Rogers Brubaker, Nationhood and the National Question in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Eur-
asia: An Institutional Account, in Teory and Society, vol. 23, no. 1 (Feb., 1994), pp. 47-78.
7
Mark Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State, Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2002, p. 6.
8
Mark Beissinger, Rethinking Empire in the Wake of Soviet Collapse, in Zoltan Barany and Ro-
bert Moser, eds., Ethnic Politics and Post-Communism: Theories and Practice, Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2005, p. 25, 32, 19, 21.
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rulers of the Principality of Moldavia
9
Stephen the Great in late 15th century and
Dimitrie Cantemir (a personal friend of Peter the Great) in the early 18th century
asked to become a part of Russia. Tis was a biased interpretation of the documents
in which Moldavians asked for help in ghting the Ottomans, but it never implied
the desire to unite with Russia. In 1812, afer a 6 year old Russian-Turkish war, the
Tsarist Empire occupied the Eastern part of the medieval Principality of Moldavia
and renamed it Bessarabia. At that time around 90 % of the local population was
ethnic Romanian
10
, but their proportion dropped to 50 % on the eve of Bolshevik
revolution due to mass colonization of the province with Russians, Ukrainians, Bul-
garians, Gagauz, Germans, and Swiss etc. In March 1918 the local parliament Sfatul
rii voted for Union with Romania based on the so-called Lenin-Wilson principle
of the self-determination of peoples.
During the entire interwar period, the Soviet Union did not recognize Romanian
sovereignty over Bessarabia. It had geopolitical reasons to do that being interested
in creating a security zone for its biggest port on the Black Sea, Odessa, situated
just 30 km across the frontier. But they could not say explicitly that Bessarabia was
part of Russia based on the dynastic, Tsarist invoked legitimation: i.e. that it was
conquered by Alexander I in 1812 and that the Soviet Union was explicitly the heir
of the Russian Empire. Tis was especially true in the 1920s when the ocial Soviet
paradigm about the Tsarist Empire was very critical about pre-revolutionary Russia
and especially its policy toward non-Russians. It was reected in Lenins famous
postulate that Tsarist Russia was the prison of peoples and that is why Moscow
promoted in the rst decade afer the revolution the korenizatsia process, i.e. to
demonstrate to the non-Russians that the Bolshevik regime was dierent from the
ancien rgime. Te Soviet regime however invented a new formula, an ideological
one mixed with an ethnic one, in order to legitimize its pretensions over Bessara-
bia. Afer several abortive armed attempts to establish control in Bessarabia, Mos-
cow changed its tactics in the mid 1920s by creating a separate Moldavian autono-
mous republic on the Ukrainian territory. Situated just across the Dniester river
and Bessarabia, it comprised some 160, 000 Moldavians, i.e. ethnic Romanians, but
their share in the total population of MASSR was only 1/3.
11
Te goal of establishing
9
Te Principality of Moldavia covered the territories from Carpathian Mountains in the West to Dni-
ester River in the East, and from Black Sea and Danube mouths in the South to Podolia in the North.
10
The terms Moldavian and Bessarabian refers to regional identity, not ethnic. From ethnic point
of view historical Bessarabia and present day Republic of Moldova is inhabited by Romanians
(one use interchangeably the term Moldavians/Moldovans as the term has been ethnicized in the
Soviet period and the majority of them are self identifying as Moldavians/Moldoveni). See more
on that , , in ,
no. 1, 2007, . 278-315, Charles King, Moldovans. Cultural Politics between Romania and Russia,
Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2001.
11
Elena Negru, Politica etnocultural in RASSM, 1924-1940, Chiinu, Editura Prut Internaional,
2003, p. 17.
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Moldavian autonomy was addressed rst of all for external consumption: to show
to the world and to European Communists especially that the USSR was dierent
from Tsarist Russia, was not imperialistic, but cared about the supposed injustice
done to Bessarabia and its inhabitants by being incorporated into Romania. More
exactly, the idea aimed at demonstrating that by doing that, the Bucharest authori-
ties divided a people in two across the Dniester River and in claiming Bessarabia
the Soviet Union just wanted to unite a nation the so-called Moldavian one that
supposedly was subject to the national and social yoke of Romanian landlords and
bourgeoisie. Tis was the rst case when there was a direct connection between
Soviet foreign policy goals and the creation of a national territory inside the Soviet
Union. According to Terry Martin, professor of history at Harvard, one of the most
prominent scholars on the subject, it was an exceptional case when the Piedmont
principle was even the primary motivation for the formation of a national republic:
Moldavian ASSR. Or, the Piedmont principle is nothing else than the belief that
cross-border ethnic ties could be exploited to project Soviet inuence into neigh-
boring states.
12
As to Ukraine, it used the Piedmont Principle itself in relation to
Poland and even Russia at that moment, but Kharkov [the capital of Ukraine at
that time] agreed on the formation of MASSR as long as it remained a territory of
Ukraine. Te new autonomous republic had its temporary capital established in
Balta (1924-1928, Birzula 1928-1929) and since 1929 in Tiraspol. What is more
important from the point of view of the perspectives invested by Moscow in this
endeavor, the founding document of MASSR (dated from October 12th 1924) men-
tioned that the western frontier of the new autonomous republic is the Prut River,
i.e. included a priori Bessarabia and Chiinu as permanent would-be capital. Te
MASSR existed from 1924 to 1940 and what happened there is important as the
national formation experiment employed there anticipated in great part Moscows
policy toward post-war Moldavian SSR, established in 1940 afer the occupation of
Bessarabia (and Northern Bukovina) by the Red Army. Between 1924 and 1932,
the Soviet authorities tried to create a separate Moldavian language based on a lo-
cal Russied Romanian vernacular in the Cyrillic alphabet. It has been recognized
however as a total failure because the local Moldavians did not perceive it as a liter-
ary standard to boast of and from 1932 to 1938 Stalin himself agreed to switch to
the Latin alphabet and make local Moldavian as Romanian as possible.
13
Among
the promoters of Romanian was a Russian Bessarabian, Grigori Staryi, president of
12
Terry Martin, Te Armative Action Empire. Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-
1939, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001, p. 274.
13
Charles King, The Ambivalence of Ethnicity or How the Moldovan Language was made, in
Slavic Review, vol. 58, no. 1, Spring, 1999, p. 117-142. See also his seminal book that includes a
detailed analysis of the interwar experiment in MASSR: Moldovans. Cultural Politics between
Romania and Russia, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2001.
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the Council of Ministers of MASSR, who was shot by Stalin in October 1937 dur-
ing the Great Terror. Other members of the party and state nomenklatura from the
MASSR establishment, writers and journalists have been sent to death as supposed
Romanian and sometimes Polish or German spies
14
.
On the 28th of June 1940, the Red Army occupied Bessarabia and Northern Bu-
kovina as a result of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 23rd 1939. According to several
articles published in the afermath by Pravda, it was envisaged as a union of MASSR
and Bessarabia and there were numerous letters including some from ethnic Ukrai-
nians living in the South and North supporting this plan. A Moldavian-Ukrainian
frontier commission led by Khrushchev was created, which nally gave one half of
MASSR back to Ukraine, but also 1/3 of the territory of Bessarabia in the south and
north. Te basic idea invoked was that Moldavians/Romanians were not a majority
in these areas of Bessarabia. And this was true, but it also was true that the Roma-
nian element was the most important ethnicity in the area, 28 per cent as compared
to Ukrainians, who comprised only 25% of the total population. Besides, as various
authors reported, including Russians as well as Moldavian Communist authorities
in 1946, the majority of local non-Romanian population spoke Romanian, the latter
being the language of interethnic communication during the Tsarist period too.
15

In this case however Khrushchev used his double hypostasis as rst secretary of CC
of Communist (b) Party of Ukraine and secretary of CC of All-Union C (b) PSU to
push for more territories for Ukraine. He tried the same with Belorussia in 1939,
but the boss of the latter had direct access to Stalin and Ukrainian pretensions had
been declared void.
16
Authorities of MASSR did not have the same connections
with Stalin and lost the case. Anyway, the division of Bessarabia was anticipated and
Moscow bears the main responsibility for that because the Soviet ultimatum sent
to Bucharest on the 26th of June 1940 mentioned that Bessarabia has been popu-
lated since ancient times by a Ukrainian majority.
17
Tat was not true of course, but
the formula was employed deliberately in order to inculcate the idea especially
for Western consumption that the partition of Bessarabia was a continuation of
uniting all Ukrainian inhabited territories in one Ukrainian Soviet state, a process
commenced a year before with Polish Galicia.
14
Elena Negru, Politica etnocultural in RASSM, 1924-1940, p. 115-127. Te complete list of the vic-
tims of Great Terror in MASSR are to be found in Ion Varta, Tatiana Varta, Igor arov [Sharov], eds.,
Marea Teroare n RASSM. Documente[Te Great Terror in MASSR. Documents], Editura ARC,
2010, vol. I, other 4 to be published soon.
15
The Archive of the Social-Social Organizations of Moldova, former Archive of Central Commit-
tee of the Communist Party of Moldavia (AOSPRM), Fond 51, inv. 4, d. 64, ff. 7-12.
16
. . , . . , . , . . , , eds.,
, 1938-1989, : , 2006, p. 65-66.
17
, 1, 1, : -
, 1995, . 385-386.
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What was Moscows policy in the province in the afermath? Did it resemble a
colonial experiment or was it rather close to the emancipation claim of Soviet Com-
munist propaganda? One should mention that in the rst year of Soviet occupation
of Bessarabia 2/3 of it and half of MASSR forming the Moldavian Union republic
in August 1940 the colonial policy was more evident and brutal than in the follow-
ing decades. Tis was true not only in terms of the forceful inclusion of Bessarabia
in the Soviet Union and the imposition of Communist ideology and institutions,
but also in terms of the linguistic hegemony of Russian and investing loyalty only in
cadres from across the Dniester River as well as discriminating against the local ones.
In other words, the Soviets did not trust even members of the illegal Bessarabian
Communist party group no matter their ethnic allegiance
18
that were active on
the territory of Bessarabia in the interwar years.
19
Not to mention all those represent-
ing or collaborating in some way or another with the interwar Romanian authorities
they were suspected of being traitors to the Soviet power. Tis was based on the as-
sumption that the Soviets supposedly took power in Bessarabia in early January 1918
just a few days before the Romanian army arrived on the demand of the local par-
liament. In other words, according to the Moscow viewpoint in contradiction to
elementary international rules all the Bessarabian population was Soviet in terms
of citizenship ab initio and thus in 1940 they were going to be judged traitors to the
Soviet fatherland for paying taxes to the Romanian state, for participating in public
life as members of cultural or political organizations and so on and so forth. All these
activities were to be coined as counterrevolutionary and anti-Soviet.
20

Beyond the three mass deportations of mid June 1941, early July 1949 and late
May 1951 which saw the forced displacement of 60, 000 persons and between
150,000-200,000 dead in the mass organized famine in 1946/1947
21
, the total num-
ber of victims of Moscows policy in the Moldavian SSR during the Stalinist period
exceeds 300,000 persons (including the victims of the 1930s in the MASSR). As to
the ethnic composition of the victims, they were of various ethnic backgrounds and
in this sense the Communist authorities did not discriminate against any ethno-na-
tional group.
22
In the post-Stalinist period however, the great bulk of the repressed
persons were ethnic Romanians and only very rarely the representatives of Russians
and Russied minorities. For instance, even though ocially both Russian Great
Power chauvinism and local nationalism were considered equal dangers for the
18
AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 6, d. 3, . 62-74.
19
That was also true of the leaders of the Communist Parties in the Baltic States. See more in
, , 1940-1953, : , 2008.
20
. , , , , 1992, . 270.
21
See . , . etc. eds., , 1946-1947, : , . 10.
22
See more in Igor Cau, Stalinist Terror in Soviet Moldavia, 1940-1953, in Kevin McDermott,
Matthew Stibbe, eds., Stalinist Terror in Eastern Europe. Elite purges and mass repression, Man-
chester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2010, p. 39-56. This does not include forced
labour mobilization. See more in I.Cau, Represiuni politice, violen i rezisten, n R(A)SSM,
1924-1989, vol.I, Chiinu, Cartier, 2013, in print.
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friendship of peoples and territorial integrity of the Soviet state, one knows of only
one documented case when a Russian was punished for expressing a chauvinistic
attitude (the Russian Pyhlov, in Bender, 1967).
23
Te punishment was however very
sof, limited to expulsion from the CPSU, meanwhile similar or almost innocent
expressions of national identity with or without elements of anti-Russian attitudes
on the part of ethnic Romanians were punished severely, usually implying impris-
onment, correctional work camp or internment in psychiatric hospital.
In economic terms, Soviet Moldavia received usually more than the other Euro-
pean (situated in the European part of USSR) Union republics and the dynamic is
increasing according to the ocial gures up until the end of Soviet Union. In this
sense, the Moldavian SSR has rather not been discriminated against in contrast to
what has been dened as a classical unjust economic relationship between metrop-
olis and colony.
24
And it is apparent from this perspective that the imperial para-
digm does not apply to post-Stalinist Moldavia, I mean if one looks at the economic,
investment rate component as compared to the amount received by other national
peripheries of the Soviet Union. And this is also true when speaking about the Bal-
tic republics. Teir level of consumption, quality of life and economic development
rate was higher than the all-union one, being in the top of all union republics.
25

At a closer glance however, the eciency of central investments in Moldavia
were not as impressive as it might seem at rst galance. Moreover, there was a very
precise political agenda at work. According to the economist Sergiu Chirc, the
overall investments in Soviet Moldavia were rather modest if one takes into ac-
count their share of per capita, this being less than the Soviet average.
26
In 1965, for
instance, the Moldavian SSR was rated 7th among the 15 union republics in terms
of economic development
27
. Twenty ve years latter (1990), it dropped to 9th place,
being the least developed of all the European Soviet republics
28
. Taking into account
the higher birth rate among ethnic Romanians and their progressive decrease in the
total share of the population inside MSSR, one can conclude as in the case of other
union republics that the high investments were made in combination with send-
ing more cadres from the center. In other words, more Russians and Ukrainians
were sent to the Moldavian SSR in parallel with allotting more money from Moscow
for developing the industrial sector. In the meantime, more Moldavians, especially
ethnic Romanians were encouraged to work in Russia.
23
Igor Cau, Exilat c cerea s se vorbeasc n romn, n Adevrul, ediia de Moldova, 17 noiembrie
2011, p. 6-7.
24
1984, , , 1985, p. 15.
25

1988 , , , 1989, . 45.
26
. , -
, , , 1979, p. 65.
27
, n. 4, 1970, p. 128.
28
Igor Cau, Politica naional n Moldova Sovietic, 1944-1989, Chiinu: Cartdidact, 2000, p. 95.
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Te specicity of Moscow-Chiinu relations could be noticed also in the way the
investments from the center were distributed at the regional level. For instance, the
present day Transnistrian territory, never afer 1940 being an ocially distinct region,
received around 30 per cent of the total investments allotted by Moscow to the Molda-
vian SSR. And this happened in the situation when that territory comprised less than
10 % of the territory and population of the republic. Te districts across the Dniester
were inhabited by a Slavic majority Ukrainians and Russians (more than 50 %),
while ethnic Romanians made 40 % and lived mainly in villages. For instance, the
largest city in the area Tiraspol had only 17% of ethnic Romanians in 1989
29
.
Another aspect as to the urban-rural development in Soviet Moldavia relevant for
the nationalities policy refers to the evolution of the urbanization rate of ethnic Roma-
nians. According to the last Soviet census of 1989, their share in the total number of ur-
ban dwellers was only 25 %. Tis is to say that two thirds of Romanians lived in the rural
areas, i.e. a less developed environment. In the meantime, the share of urbanized Rus-
sians was 80% and Ukrainians 45 %.
30
It remains still unclear if that low share in the
total urban population was an intended part of centrally planned nationalities policy or
just a side eect of the center administered industrial enterprises, which covered about
25 % of the total local industry in comparison with only 10 % in the Baltic republics.
But what is sure is that the discrimination of local ethnic Romanian cadres was
not only a perception. In the industrial sector for instance at the level of managers
of enterprises they made only 2, 3 % in 1964, rising to only 8, 6 % twenty years later,
in 1984.
31
If in the immediate postwar period the accent on arriving cadres espe-
cially Russians and Ukrainians was somehow justied from the Moscow point
of view as the local cadres were lacking or could not be trusted because of their
social, ethnic and educational background that could be hardly the case afer the
1960s. Or, the cadres that were prepared ocially for Moldavias need were sent to
work in other republics, basically Russia and Ukraine.
Another criteria one can verify is the level of Moscows control in Soviet Mol-
davia and its dynamics by looking at how the share of ethnic Romanians evolved
in key Communist party and government positions. In the early 1950s the share
of ethnic Romanians in the Communist nomenklatura was around 10 %. In 1967 it
increased to 42, 5 % and in 1987 to 54 %.
32
At the same time, the share of ethnic
Romanians in the total number of Communists was around 8% in 1950, increasing to
29
See more on that in Istoria Transnistriei. De la nceputuri pn n zilele noastre, Chiinu: Civitas,
2005 (article by Igor Cau).
30
Current archive of the Department of Statistics of the Republic of Moldova, document 07.13. 26
from March 30th 1990.
31
Archival data published by V. Stvil in Evoluia componenei naionale a elitei politico-econo-
mice a RSSM, 1940-1991, in Revista de Istorie a Moldovei, nr. 4, 1996, p. 39.
32
V. Stvil, Evoluia componenei naionale a elitei politico-economice a RSSM, 1940-1991, in
Revista de Istorie a Moldovei, nr. 4, 1996, p. 38.
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35 % in 1965 and 49% in 1989.
33
At the same time, the same share in the government
positions at the republican level increased from 38 % to 49 % in 1984.
34
However, if one
looks at the key positions in the party and government, the situation is not so impres-
sive. For instance, the rst ethnic Romanian from the Bessarabian part of the former
Moldavian SSR to serve as First Secretary of CC of Communist Party of Moldavia was
Petru Lucinschi appointed in mid November 1989! Before that, this position was held
by Transnistrians including ethnic Romanians but highly Russied, some of them
talking a very poor Romanian or not talking it at all! Besides, the Second Secretary of
the local party organization that controlled as a matter of fact the cadres policy at the
republican level and other key domains was held always by an ethnic Russian. Te rst
ethnic Romanian to hold this position was Ion Guu, appointed in November 1989.
Tis was true also regarding key government positions such as President of the Council
of Ministers. Te rst ethnic Romanian born in Northern Bessarabia to hold this
position was Mircea Druc, elected by a democratic Supreme Soviet (parliament) in May
1990. Te key ministries such as Ministry of Interior and KGB were always occupied by
non-Romanians or ethnic Romanians from across the Dniester, i.e. Russied ones. Te
rst ethnic Romanian from the Bessarabian territory to serve as Minister of Interior
was Ion Costa, named in 1990 and in the position of the local chief of the KGB was
Tudor Botnaru, named in the same year, i.e. just on the eve of the collapse of the Soviet
Union. Te latter however kept subordination to Moscow up until the ocial end of
the Soviet Union in December 1991! Not to mention that as a matter of fact the rst
ethnic Romanian born in Bessarabia to become a member of Bureau of CC of PCM was
Dumitru Cornovan, in 1961 and the rst minister of MSSR, an ethnic Romanian born
in Bessarabia (albeit in the southern part, ceded by Moscow to Ukraine in 1940) was
Vasile Russu, named as Minister of Telecommunications in 1966.
One can also acknowledge the specicity of the nationality policy and center-periph-
ery relations in the Moldavian case at the level of other domains, for example linguistic
policy or cultural policy more broadly. Ocially there was a permanent increase start-
ing with the 1960s of the total number of books, journals and newspapers published in
Romanian in Cyrillic letters. However, one can notice a dramatic decrease in the public
use of the Romanian language. Tat could be observed especially at the level of higher
education institutions, more and more disciplines being every year switched to Russian
language of teaching in the ocially Romanian groups.
Te quality of the spoken language was decreasing as Russian became the main
language of the mass media, higher education and academia. Not to mention that all
documents in the government and party were only in Russian and this was a per-
manent reality up until 1989 when the rst ocial documents in Romanian timidly
made their way out. Speaking publicly Romanian was ofen a sign for Communist
33
Ibidem, p. 39.
34
Ibidem, p. 41.
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authorities of Moldo-Romanian nationalism especially during the party meetings
or meetings held at various education institutions (this was also true of Ukrainian
language in Ukraine!).
35
Te Latin alphabet had been prohibited since 1944 as in
the most part of the Tsarist period. It was replaced with the Cyrillic one, envisaged
to serve as an identity marker and a communication barrier from the Romanians
across the Prut River. Tose contesting the appropriateness of employing Russian
letters for an East Romance language were severely punished. In the Stalinist period
they were arrested and deported to Siberia as Moldo-Romanian nationalists. Afer
1953, they were either socially marginalized or sent to psychiatric hospitals, as was
the case of numerous citizens, among them Gheorghe David, sent to Dnepropetro-
vsk psychiatric hospital under Gorbachev, in 1986. Besides asking to reestablish
the Latin script for Moldavian language, he also criticized the discrimination of
local cadres and the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. It is interesting that David sent
letters with the same messages to Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko, but only
under Gorbachev was he sentenced to psychiatric treatment.
36
Other symbolic assertions of national identity, in the limits and forms accepted
ocially by the regime, were the subject of KGB intervention and treated as disloyal
political behavior. For instance, the simple gestures of putting owers to the statue of
the greatest Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu in downtown Chiinu, accepted o-
cially by Moscow as the greatest Moldavian poet too, were interpreted as a manifesta-
tion of nationalism and anti-Russian attitude.
37
Te same was true of the statue of the
greatest Moldavian medieval Prince Stephen the Great. Mihai Moroanu for instance,
a student from the Polytechnic Institute in 1964 initiated among students from vari-
ous higher education institutions the signing of a letter of protest against the removal
of Stephen the Great statue from downtown area to a marginal place. For that he was
arrested by the KGB, expelled from the Polytechnic Institute and condemned to two
years in a correctional work camp (- )
38
.
Romanian identity, called Moldavian in the Soviet period in the Moldavian SSR,
was permitted only at the level of folk culture. Tere were folkloric ensembles, na-
tional theater and operas performing in Romanian, but almost all the movies till the
late 1980s were broadcasted exclusively in Russian, including those made in Chiinu
by the republican movie company, Moldova-lm. Tis was also true of almost every
TV program and this contradicted blatantly with the ocial pretension that national
republics enjoyed equal conditions to develop their own language and culture.
35
. . , . . , , 1938-2002, , , 2003, . 311,
315.
36
The Archive of Service of Information and Security of the Republic of Moldova, former KGB, ASISRM-
KGB, Davids file has been published in Basarabia, no. 9, 1990, pp. 140-152 by Nicolae Negru.
37
Interview with Nicolae Cibotaru, Associate Professor in History at Moldova State Pedagogical
University, March 11, 2011.
38
Archive of the Polytechnic University (in the Soviet period it was an Institute), personal file of
Mihai Moroan, f. 31. Interview with Mihai Moroanu, March 2011.
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Tose insisting on buying books fromRomania, in the Latin alphabet, were having
troubles. And those doubting the existence of a Moldavian nation in ethnical terms
were severely punished. Tose that did not question the Communist system, but just
proposed the Union of the former Bessarabia and North Bukovina with Romania were
condemned as nationalists. Tis was especially the case of the group called National
Patriotic Front led by Alexandru Usatiuc and Gheorghe Ghimpu. Other two leading
members were arrested and sent to Gulag plus exile in Siberia for 4 to 13 years.
39

Speaking about the short term perspective in center-periphery relations in the late
1980s, it is important to stress several factors that poisoned dramatically the intereth-
nic dialogue and Moldavian-Center relations as a whole. First, there is the role of the
language laws adopted in the late 198os in Moldova in unveiling the tensions between
Chiinu and Moscow authorities on the one hand, and Romanian speakers and the lo-
cal Russian speaking community on the other. In others words, even though linguistic
laws were among the most liberal as compared to other republics
40
, the Russian speak-
ers perceived the adoption of language laws establishing the Romanian language in the
Latin alphabet as an aront to their previous status. Tey claimed that their rights were
violated, but as a matter of fact it was about losing a privileged status. Another problem
was related to some new industrial projects initiated by Moscow in Chiinu, such as
building a huge computer making company of all-Union importance in the late 1980s.
Tis also contributed to the growing tension in the center-periphery relations because
it involved a mass arrival of cadres from the Center. Tis fueled mass mobilization
on an ethnic basis, as this was perceived as a threat to local interests in the situation
when unemployment in the urban areas, especially in Chiinu, was already rampant.
Another problem that was used to mobilize local masses against the Center was the
ecological issues, Moldova being one of the renowned places in the Soviet Union for
experimenting with new chemicals in agriculture.
Out of these problems, the most enduring was the linguistic issue as well as the
one related to interpreting the Communist past. Ethnic Romanians tended to blame
the local Russians as occupiers and for transplanting Communism into Moldova,
the latter saying that they have been also victims of the Communist regime and they
did not suer any less. In this sense, the best answer to this question has been made
by a Russian journalist from Moldova in 1989. Addressing her fellow Russians from
Moldova, Evghenia Solomonova said:
A lot of you would ask me: what is the guilt of the Russian people [in establishing Com-
munism in Moldova], that has been itself a victim of Stalinist repressions and stagnation
[referring basically to Brezhnev period]? [You would say that] It is about our common mis-
fortune, not about guilt, isnt it? Dear fellow citizens! My opinion is that our suerings could
not justify us in the face of others whom we forced to share our misfortune.
39
ASISRM-KGB, le Usatiuc Ghimpu, 11 volumes. See more about that in the other article by I.
Cau in this volume.
40
See for instance , , , 1998.
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And she continues talking about the perceptions and facts of Soviet Nationalities
policy in Moldova in order to get to the hearts of her fellow Russians:
Under the inuence of Stalinist national policy there was created a stereotype in our think-
ing (), namely that we are liberators and protectors of the Moldavian people () We are hav-
ing the psychology of the Big brother that should guide, but is not obliged to take in account
himself of the opinion of the Smaller brother, less to learn his language, history and culture.
Such an ideology that saved us from such details was convenient for us because it obliged the
Smaller brother for a mutual understanding namely on the level that was suitable for us.
Te fact that we are asking now for two state languages is a proof in this sense
41
.
Of course, these words were not convincing for all. Te refusal of Russian speakers
to accept Romanian as the ocial language ignited Transnistrian separatism, which is
to be explained in itself primarily as a result of competition between the lef bank elites
and the Bessarabian ones. Te former were losing their special privileged relation with
Moscow and thus initiated a strike and then a separatist regime, in 1990, that continues
till nowadays and is supported by Russia, including the use of armed forces.
Some conclusions:
Moscow did not trust Bessarabians, because they had a national consciousness
higher than the Romanians from across the Dniester River; thus, in the key posi-
tions both at party and government levels there were promoted almost exclusively
non-Bessarabians and ofen non-Romanians, usually Russians and Ukrainians;
in economic terms it is apparent that there was no discrimination against Soviet
Moldavia from the part of the Center, but the direct implications of the invest-
ment ows to Moldavia were accompanied by sending more Russians and Ukrai-
nians to work in the republic at these newly established industrial enterprises;
one can see crystal clear discrimination in the share of ethnic Romanians in the
number of industrial managers only 2,3 % in 1964 and 8,6 % in 1984;
at the cultural and linguistic level, Romanian language, called Moldavian in the
Soviet period and switched to Cyrillic alphabet to become an ethnic marker, was
admitted in schools, especially in villages dominated numerically by Romanians,
but at the higher education institutions and at the public level Russian was the
dominant language;
discrimination one of the keywords related to the imperial paradigm
could be noticed also in regard to the persons in the position of First Secre-
tary, Second Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of
Moldavia, President of the Council of Ministers, chief of MVD and KGB;
speaking about imperial type relations in the Soviet period in regard to Mol-
41
nvmntul public, 10 iunie, 1989, p. 2.
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davian SSR, one can notice that in some cases besides Moscow the role of
the imperial Center was played by Ukraine, especially in the interwar years
(MASSR), but also in the crucial moment of 1940 when the frontiers of
MSSR were being drawn and well aferwards;
the imperial type relations divide et impera style between Moscow and
Chiinu became more obvious in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the
Center encouraged two territorial secessionist movements, a Gagauz and
a Transnistrian one in order to discourage Moldovas striving for indepen-
dence, and later on from uniting with Romania or willing to become a mem-
ber of the European Union.