177-658: The Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic ( PMSSR ), also commonly known as Soviet Transnistria or simply as Transnistria , was created on the eastern periphery of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR) in 1990 by pro-Soviet separatists who hoped to remain within the Soviet Union when it became clear that the MSSR would achieve independence from the USSR and possibly unite with Romania . The PMSSR
354-534: A coup d'état attempt to prevent him from signing the New Union Treaty in which Soviet Republics such as Moldova would gain more autonomy under the Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics . The PMSSR supported the failed coup attempt, which Moldova opposed. Throughout late 1991 and into early 1992, workers' battalions, increasingly the beneficiaries of weaponry from sympathetic Red Army officers and defections from among
531-534: A minority language by stable communities in the countries surrounding Romania ( Bulgaria , Hungary , Serbia and Ukraine ), and by the large Romanian diaspora . In total, it is spoken by 25 million people as a first language . Romanian was also known as Moldovan in Moldova, although the Constitutional Court of Moldova ruled in 2013 that "the official language of Moldova is Romanian". On 16 March 2023,
708-635: A multi-party system . The majority in the supreme council belongs to the Renewal movement that defeated the Republic party affiliated with Igor Smirnov in 2005 and performed even better in the 2010 and 2015 elections. Elections in Transnistria are not recognised by international bodies such as the European Union , as well as numerous individual countries, who called them a source of increased tensions. There
885-626: A new republican flag based on the yellow, red and blue Romanian flag . This highly visible sign of defiance against the Soviet government served as the pretext for the first big showdown between the republican government in Chișinău and the OSTK-controlled soviets in Transnistria. Within three days, the Tiraspol city soviet announced that it did not accept the new flag. In the territory under its jurisdiction,
1062-559: A "Grand National Assembly" in Chișinău's Victory Square outside of the Supreme Soviet building to show their support. Elsewhere in Chișinău and other cities, smaller rallies voiced opposition. The most effective opposition came in the form of a massive strike movement that originated in the Transnistrian city of Tiraspol. While the group Intermovement - " Unitate-Edinstvo " ("Unity") was the first to organize significant opposition to
1239-553: A "regional language" alongside Ukrainian as per the 2012 legislation on languages in Ukraine . Romanian is an official or administrative language in various communities and organisations, such as the Latin Union and the European Union . Romanian is also one of the five languages in which religious services are performed in the autonomous monastic state of Mount Athos , spoken in the monastic communities of Prodromos and Lakkoskiti . In
1416-808: A 2005 agreement between Moldova and Ukraine , all Transnistrian companies seeking to export goods through the Ukrainian border must be registered with the Moldovan authorities . This agreement was implemented after the European Union Border Assistance Mission to Moldova and Ukraine (EUBAM) took force in 2005. In addition to the unrecognized Transnistrian citizenship, most Transnistrians have Moldovan citizenship, but many also have Russian, Romanian, or Ukrainian citizenship. The main ethnic groups are Russians, Moldovans/Romanians, and Ukrainians. Transnistria, along with Abkhazia and South Ossetia ,
1593-403: A Transnistrian court sentence him to death in 1992 for terrorism on behalf of the Moldovan state, is one such example. As head economist of one Tiraspol factory, he was derided as "head extremist" by coworkers before he was fired. His employer reinstated Ilaşcu after he protested with the city prosecutor, but he continued to clash with coworkers and local authorities as the city's branch chairman of
1770-770: A countermovement and looked to engineers and factory managers for leadership. Newly empowered by the weakened CPSU , and increasingly pressured by the ascendant movement for national reawakening, the Moldavian Supreme Soviet (which became the Moldovan legislature in June 1990) announced the creation of a body—the Interdepartmental Commission for the Study of the History and Problems of the Development of Moldovan—to research
1947-719: A foreign language, for example the Nicolae Bălcescu High-school in Gyula , Hungary. Romanian is taught as a foreign language in tertiary institutions, mostly in European countries such as Germany, France and Italy, and the Netherlands, as well as in the United States. Overall, it is taught as a foreign language in 43 countries around the world. Romanian has become popular in other countries through movies and songs performed in
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#17330858278822124-483: A high degree of lexical permeability, reflecting contact with Thraco-Dacian , Slavic languages (including Old Slavic , Serbian , Bulgarian , Ukrainian , and Russian ), Greek , Hungarian , German , Turkish , and to languages that served as cultural models during and after the Age of Enlightenment , in particular French . This lexical permeability is continuing today with the introduction of English words. Yet while
2301-546: A large number of seats in the Republican Supreme Soviet (republican legislature) as well as the Chișinău city soviet while OSTK supporters won an overwhelming victory in the city soviets of the big cities in Transnistria. With the communist party severely weakened, the OSTK, in essence, took control of local government in Transnistria. The elections themselves were to unfold with an unprecedented level of freedom. Throughout
2478-524: A legal part of the Republic of Moldova. Only the partially recognised or unrecognised states of South Ossetia and Abkhazia have recognised Transnistria as a sovereign entity after it declared independence from Moldova in 1990 with Tiraspol as its declared capital. Between 1929 and 1940, Tiraspol functioned as the capital of the Moldavian ASSR , an autonomous republic that existed from 1924 to 1940 within
2655-430: A limited scale that broke out between Transnistrian separatists and Moldova as early as November 1990 at Dubăsari . Volunteers, including Cossacks , came from Russia to help the separatist side. In mid-April 1992, under the agreements on the split of the military equipment of the former Soviet Union negotiated between the former 15 republics in the previous months, Moldova created its own Defence Ministry. According to
2832-530: A linguistic group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin which separated from the Western Romance languages in the course of the period from the 5th to the 8th centuries. To distinguish it within the Eastern Romance languages, in comparative linguistics it is called Daco-Romanian as opposed to its closest relatives, Aromanian , Megleno-Romanian , and Istro-Romanian . It is also spoken as
3009-521: A meeting with representatives of the anti-strike committee of one enterprise," she told fellow central committee members. "They told me about how they heroically withstood pressure, blackmail, belittling, and insults during the strike from the Russophone population." Elsewhere, the OSTK even had to give in to resistance. On 26 August the director of a textiles factory in Rȋbniţa told the city strike committee that
3186-517: A name that was extended to the literature and writers around this time such as Vasile Alecsandri , Grigore Alexandrescu , Nicolae Bălcescu , Timotei Cipariu . Between 1830 and 1860 "transitional alphabets" were used, adding Latin letters to the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet . The Latin alphabet became official at different dates in Wallachia and Transylvania - 1860, and Moldova -1862. Following
3363-436: A presence on the streets, but the communist party attempted to reassert its power in the area after being marginalized by the OSTK in the summer and fall. In both cases it was a tense winter as the communist party attempted to regain control of the republic in the face of revolts from two directions: one the national revivalists and the other to pro-Soviets. In October the communist party began attempting to reassert its power in
3540-477: A short, but bloody, war in late June 1992 . The war left the separatists in Tiraspol with de facto control over most of Transnistria and the west-bank city of Tighina (from now on known as Bender or Bendery). However, even as the Dniester Republic grew more established as a state, the end of 1991 brought with it the collapse of the state within which the OSTK activists had originally been striving to remain:
3717-572: A significant share of the local population (districts in Chernivtsi , Odesa and Zakarpattia oblasts ) Romanian is taught in schools as a primary language and there are Romanian-language newspapers, TV, and radio broadcasting. The University of Chernivtsi in western Ukraine trains teachers for Romanian schools in the fields of Romanian philology, mathematics and physics. In Hertsa Raion of Ukraine as well as in other villages of Chernivtsi Oblast and Zakarpattia Oblast , Romanian has been declared
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#17330858278823894-402: A tenuous hold, however, on the city government of Dubasari and was a minority in some of the more rural districts. Throughout 1990, OSTK-controlled soviets in Transnistria battled with republican authorities in Chișinău, many of the latter also elected in 1990 and that on a platform of Moldovian national awakening. On 27 April 1990, the Supreme Soviet of Moldova took the symbolic step of adopting
4071-558: A total of 147 localities (including here those unincorporated). Six communes on the left bank ( Cocieri , Molovata Nouă , Corjova , Pîrîta , Coșnița , and Doroțcaia ) remained under the control of the Moldovan government after the Transnistria War of 1992, as part of the Dubăsari District . They are situated north and south of the city of Dubăsari, which itself is under PMR control. The village of Roghi of Molovata Nouă Commune
4248-430: A variety of issues—whether or not to create a Transnistrian state; which alphabet to use for the Moldovan language, which was to be defended; whether or not to accept the new Moldovan flag and others. Indeed, referendums constituted an act of defiance in and of themselves as the Moldovan government routinely declared the organization of such referendums illegal and routinely nullified the results. On September 2, 1990, in
4425-534: A year, and it was finished only after the War of Transnistria . The key participants in the creation of the PMSSR were almost entirely from the ranks of Soviet industrial workers and factory administration. Once the PMSSR had been created, the incipient government in Tiraspol fought an increasingly violent struggle for sovereignty with the Moldovan government in Chișinău. In August 1991, many of Gorbachev's advisors participated in
4602-464: Is Pridnestrovie ( Russian : Приднестровье , pronounced [prʲɪ.dʲnʲɪ.ˈstro.v⁽ʲ⁾je] ; Romanian : Nistrenia , Moldovan Cyrillic : Нистрения , pronounced [nis.tre.ni.ja] ; Ukrainian : Придністров'я , Prydnistrovia , pronounced [prɪ.ɟɲi.ˈstrɔu̯.jɐ] ), meaning "[land] by the Dniester". The Supreme Council passed a law on 4 September 2024 which banned
4779-634: Is Tiraspol . Transnistria is officially designated by the Republic of Moldova as the Administrative-Territorial Units of the Left Bank of the Dniester ( Romanian : Unitățile Administrativ-Teritoriale din stînga Nistrului ) or as Stînga Nistrului ("Left (Bank) of the Dniester"). The region's origins can be traced to the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic , which was formed in 1924 within
4956-533: Is the M4 road from Tiraspol to Rîbnița through Dubăsari . The highway is controlled in its entirety by the PMR. North and south of Dubăsari it passes through land corridors controlled by Moldova in the villages of Doroțcaia, Cocieri, Roghi, and Vasilievca , the latter being located entirely to the east of the road. The road is the de facto border between Moldova and Transnistria in the area. Conflict erupted on several occasions when
5133-452: Is Moldovan. The state language is used in political, economic, social and cultural life and functions on the basis of the Latin alphabet ." However, it went on to promise protection of Russian and other languages of Moldova's minority populations. The passage of the language laws was accompanied by massive rallies outside the legislature building in Chișinău with upwards of 500,000 people gathered in
5310-741: Is a post-Soviet " frozen conflict " zone. These three partially recognised or unrecognised states maintain friendly relations with each other and form the Community for Democracy and Rights of Nations . In March 2022, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution that defines the territory as under military occupation by Russia . The region can also be referred to in English as Dniesteria , Trans-Dniester , Transdniester or Transdniestria . These names are adaptations of
5487-496: Is also controlled by the PMR (Moldova controls the other nine of the 10 villages of the six communes). On the west bank, in Bessarabia, the city of Bender (Tighina) and four communes (containing six villages) to its east, south-east, and south, on the opposite bank of the river Dniester from the city of Tiraspol ( Proteagailovca , Gîsca , Chițcani , and Cremenciug ) are controlled by the PMR. The localities controlled by Moldova on
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5664-424: Is also spoken within communities of Romanian and Moldovan immigrants in the United States, Canada and Australia, although they do not make up a large homogeneous community statewide. Many are Moldavians who were deported Data only for the districts on the right bank of Dniester (without Transnistria and the city of Tighina). In Moldova, it is sometimes referred to as the " Moldovan language " In Transnistria, it
5841-509: Is based on, for 411 km; 255 mi) to the west, and Ukraine (for 405 km; 252 mi) to the east. It is a narrow valley stretching north–south along the bank of the Dniester river , which forms a natural boundary along most of the de facto border with Moldova. The territory controlled by the PMR is mostly, but not completely, conterminous with the left (eastern) bank of Dniester. It includes ten cities and towns, and 69 communes, with
6018-470: Is disagreement over whether elections in Transnistria are free and fair. The political regime has been described as one of "super- presidentialism " before the 2011 constitutional reform. During the 2006 presidential election, the registration of opposition candidate Andrey Safonov was delayed until a few days before the vote, so that he had little time to conduct an election campaign. Some sources consider election results suspect. In 2001, in one region it
6195-477: Is distinguished by the activity of Romanian literature classics in its early decades: Mihai Eminescu , Ion Luca Caragiale , Ion Creangă , Ioan Slavici . The current orthography, with minor reforms to this day and using Latin letters, was fully implemented in 1881, regulated by the Romanian Academy on a fundamentally phonological principle, with few morpho-syntactic exceptions. The first Romanian grammar
6372-593: Is official only in the villages of Vojvodinci ( Voivodinț ), Markovac ( Marcovăț ), Straža ( Straja ), Mali Žam ( Jamu Mic ), Malo Središte ( Srediștea Mică ), Mesić ( Mesici ), Jablanka ( Iablanca ), Sočica ( Sălcița ), Ritiševo ( Râtișor ), Orešac ( Oreșaț ) and Kuštilj ( Coștei ). In the 2002 Census, the last carried out in Serbia, 1.5% of Vojvodinians stated Romanian as their native language. The Vlachs of Serbia are considered to speak Romanian as well. In parts of Ukraine where Romanians constitute
6549-588: Is officially called " Moldovan language " and is written in Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet . Officially divided into Vlachs and Romanians Most in Northern Bukovina and Southern Bessarabia; according to a Moldova Noastră study (based on the latest Ukrainian census). According to the Constitution of Romania of 1991, as revised in 2003, Romanian is the official language of the Republic. Romania mandates
6726-416: Is unvarying all year round, although with a slight increase in the summer months. Transnistria is subdivided into five districts ( raions ) and one municipality, the city of Tiraspol (which is entirely surrounded by but administratively distinct from Slobozia District), listed below from north to south (Russian names and transliterations are appended in parentheses). In addition, another municipality,
6903-476: The Administrative-Territorial Units of the Left Bank of the Dniester within the Republic of Moldova. According to the 2004 census, the population of Transnistria comprised 555,347 people, while at the 2015 census the population decreased to 475,373. In 2004, 90% of the population of Transnistria were citizens of Transnistria. Transnistrians may have dual, triple or even quadruple citizenship of internationally recognised countries, including: Fifteen villages from
7080-545: The Cannes Film Festival ). Also some artists wrote songs dedicated to the Romanian language. The multi-platinum pop trio O-Zone (originally from Moldova) released a song called "Nu mă las de limba noastră" ("I won't forsake our language"). The final verse of this song, "Eu nu mă las de limba noastră, de limba noastră cea română" , is translated in English as "I won't forsake our language, our Romanian language". Also,
7257-674: The Moldovan Parliament approved a law on referring to the national language as Romanian in all legislative texts and the constitution. On 22 March, the president of Moldova, Maia Sandu , promulgated the law. The history of the Romanian language started in the Roman provinces north of the Jireček Line in Classical antiquity but there are 3 main hypotheses about its exact territory: the autochthony thesis (it developed in left-Danube Dacia only),
Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic - Misplaced Pages Continue
7434-459: The Romanian Academy . The third phase of the modern age of Romanian language, starting from 1880 and continuing to this day, is characterized by the prevalence of the supradialectal form of the language, standardized with the express contribution of the school system and Romanian Academy, bringing a close to the process of literary language modernization and development of literary styles. It
7611-525: The Soviet police force offered excellent opportunities for oppositionists to challenge authorities in highly visible settings and disrupt events of premiere importance to the Soviet regime. Popular Front activists, often going beyond the official sanction of the movement leadership, organized actions that embarrassed the republican leadership, ultimately resulted in riots in Central Chișinău . This unrest sealed
7788-502: The Transnistria Governorate , with an area of 39,733 km (15,341 sq mi) and a population of 2.3 million inhabitants, was divided into 13 counties: Ananiev, Balta, Berzovca, Dubasari, Golta, Jugastru, Movilau, Oceacov, Odessa, Ovidiopol , Rîbnița, Tiraspol, and Tulcin. This expanded Transnistria was home to nearly 200,000 Romanian-speaking residents. The Romanian administration of Transnistria attempted to stabilise
7965-686: The Ukrainian SSR . During World War II , the Soviet Union took parts of the Moldavian ASSR , which was dissolved, and of the Kingdom of Romania 's Bessarabia to form the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1940. The present history of the region dates to 1990, during the dissolution of the Soviet Union , when the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic was established in hopes that it would remain within
8142-542: The Vulgar Latin spoken in the Roman provinces of Southeastern Europe north of the Jireček Line (a hypothetical boundary between the dominance of Latin and Greek influences). Most scholars agree that two major dialects developed from Common Romanian by the 10th century. Daco-Romanian (the official language of Romania and Moldova) and Istro-Romanian (a language spoken by no more than 2,000 people in Istria ) descended from
8319-507: The flag of the Soviet Union was to be used until that time when the city soviet deputies could decide on permanent symbols. Although the Moldovan Supreme Soviet annulled this decision on May 4, the city soviets of Tighina and Rîbnița soon followed suit on the 5th and 8th respectively. The continued defiance prompted the Moldovan government to pass a law on May 10 making the acceptance of the new flag legally binding. However, although
8496-435: The unification of Moldavia and Wallachia further studies on the language were made, culminating with the founding of Societatea Literară Română on 1 April 1866 on the initiative of C. A. Rosetti , an academic society that had the purpose of standardizing the orthography, formalizing the grammar and (via a dictionary) vocabulary of the language, and promoting literary and scientific publications. This institution later became
8673-486: The "liberty to teach in the mother language (Romanian language)". At the same time, Romanian-language newspapers and journals began to appear, such as Basarabia (1906), Viața Basarabiei (1907), Moldovanul (1907), Luminătorul (1908), Cuvînt moldovenesc (1913), Glasul Basarabiei (1913). From 1913, the synod permitted that "the churches in Bessarabia use the Romanian language". Romanian finally became
8850-470: The 11 communes of Dubăsari District, including Cocieri and Doroțcaia that geographically are located on the east bank of the Dniester (in Transnistria region), have been under the control of the central government of Moldova after the involvement of local inhabitants on the side of Moldovan forces during the War of Transnistria. These villages, along with Varnița and Copanca , near Bender and Tiraspol, are claimed by
9027-524: The 12th or 13th century, official documents and religious texts were written in Old Church Slavonic , a language that had a similar role to Medieval Latin in Western Europe. The oldest dated text in Romanian is a letter written in 1521 with Cyrillic letters , and until late 18th century, including during the development of printing, the same alphabet was used. The period after 1780, starting with
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#17330858278829204-479: The 16th century, by various foreign travelers into the Carpathian Romance-speaking space, as well as in other historical documents written in Romanian at that time such as Cronicile Țării Moldovei [ ro ] ( The Chronicles of the land of Moldova ) by Grigore Ureche . The few allusions to the use of Romanian in writing as well as common words, anthroponyms, and toponyms preserved in
9381-496: The 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev 's policies of perestroika and glasnost in the Soviet Union allowed political liberalisation at a regional level. This led to the creation of various informal movements all over the country, and to a rise of nationalism within most Soviet republics. In the Moldavian SSR in particular, there was a significant resurgence of pro-Romanian nationalism among Moldovans. The most prominent of these movements
9558-528: The Assembly, the Executive Council and the provincial administrative bodies. The Romanian language and script are officially used in eight municipalities: Alibunar , Bela Crkva ( Biserica Albă ), Žitište ( Sângeorgiu de Bega ), Zrenjanin ( Becicherecu Mare ), Kovačica ( Covăcița ), Kovin ( Cuvin ), Plandište ( Plandiște ) and Sečanj ( Seceani ). In the municipality of Vršac ( Vârșeț ), Romanian
9735-490: The City of Bender, situated on the western bank of the Dniester, in Bessarabia, and geographically outside Transnistria, is not part of the territorial unit of Transnistria as defined by the Moldovan central authorities, but it is controlled by the PMR authorities, which consider it part of PMR's administrative organisation: Each of the districts is further divided into cities and communes. All UN member states consider Transnistria
9912-640: The Communist Party to that of the OSTK, it is important to note that Smirnov ran for the position of chairman of the city Soviet (head of local government) against the secretary of the city Communist Party committee; in the March 23rd session that decided the issue Smirnov took the chairmanship with 86 of the 134 votes, defeating Leonid Turcan with 64% of the vote. Events in Tighina and Rîbnița were similar, with OSTK leaders taking control of local government. The OSTK had only
10089-621: The Cyrillic script, and the Latin script as stipulated by the law, the Croat , Hungarian , Slovak , Romanian and Rusyn languages and their scripts, as well as languages and scripts of other nationalities, shall simultaneously be officially used in the work of the bodies of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, in the manner established by the law. The bodies of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina are:
10266-478: The Dniester"). According to the Transnistrian authorities, the name of the state is the "Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic" (PMR) ( Russian : Приднестро́вская Молда́вская Респу́блика, ПМР , Pridnestróvskaya Moldávskaya Respúblika ; Romanian : Republica Moldovenească Nistreană, RMN , Moldovan Cyrillic : Република Молдовеняскэ Нистрянэ, РМН ; Ukrainian : Придністро́вська Молда́вська Респу́бліка, ПМР , Prydnistróvska Moldávska Respúblika ). The short form
10443-698: The Dubăsari-Cocieri area, when a confrontation between Moldovan and Transnistrian forces occurred, though without any casualties. June 2010 surveys indicated that 13% of Transnistria's population desired the area's reintegration into Moldova in the condition of territorial autonomy, while 46% wanted Transnistria to be part of the Russian Federation. Transnistria is a non-UN member state recognised as independent only by Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both being non-UN member states with limited recognition. Nina Shtanski served as Transnistria's Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2012 to 2015; Vitaly Ignatiev [ ru ] succeeded her as minister. In 2024 Vitaly Ignatiev
10620-406: The European Union, and thus less likely to enter negotiations for economic relief from Transnistria. Transnistria's vaguely worded request for "protection" from Russia has led to fears that, instead of offering economic aid, Russia will attempt to "annex" the region, as they did with occupied Ukraine in 2022 . Transnistria is landlocked and borders Bessarabia (the region the Republic of Moldova
10797-424: The MSSR, activists from a number of Tiraspol factories came together to create the United Work Collective Council ( Ob"edinnennyi Sovet trudovykh kollektivov , OSTK) and called an immediate strike that eventually led to the shutdown of most major industrial activity (concentrated in the Transnistrian region) throughout the SSR. The OSTK began using the STKs in the same way the party had used its cells. The peak of
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#173308582788210974-399: The Moldavian SSR in the following months on charges of collaboration with the Romanian occupiers. A later campaign directed against rich peasant families deported them to the Kazakh SSR and Siberia . Over the course of two days, 6–7 July 1949, a plan named "Operation South" saw the deportation of over 11,342 families by order of the Moldavian Minister of State Security, Iosif Mordovets. In
11151-428: The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic and was quickly sovietized . In this process of collectivization and " dekulakization ", the left bank of the Dniester had a clear advantage: the territory had been collectivized during the First Five-Year Plan (FFYP) during the 1930s, it had enjoyed a reasonable amount of industrialisation , and boasted relatively experienced, trustworthy cadres. The MASSR had been formed on
11328-401: The Moldovan autonomies of Gagauzia and Transnistria . Romanian is also an official language of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina in Serbia along with five other languages. Romanian minorities are encountered in Serbia ( Timok Valley ), Ukraine ( Chernivtsi and Odesa oblasts ), and Hungary ( Gyula ). Large immigrant communities are found in Italy, Spain, France, and Portugal. In 1995,
11505-537: The Moldovan government held a working session in Dubăsari in the building of the raion soviet which was loyal to the central authorities in Chișinău. Moreover, many Transnistrian civil servants, including the police, employees of the public prosecutor's, and employees of the court system remained loyal to the government in Chișinău. These were often the targets of violence and intimidation as Transnistrian authorities attempted to take control of loyalist governmental institutions. Seizing these state institutions took more than
11682-449: The Moldovan musicians Doina and Ion Aldea Teodorovici performed a song called "The Romanian language". Romanian is also called Daco-Romanian in comparative linguistics to distinguish from the other dialects of Common Romanian : Aromanian , Megleno-Romanian , and Istro-Romanian . The origin of the term "Daco-Romanian" can be traced back to the first printed book of Romanian grammar in 1780, by Samuil Micu and Gheorghe Șincai . There,
11859-496: The Moldovan police refused to intervene or restore order. In the interest of preserving a unified Moldavian SSR within the USSR and preventing the situation escalating further, then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, while citing the restriction of civil rights of ethnic minorities by Moldova as the cause of the dispute, declared the Transnistria proclamation to be devoid of a legal basis and annulled it by presidential decree on 22 December 1990. Nevertheless, no significant action
12036-422: The OSTK, 21 (95 percent) of which won their seats. Of the 18 that did not mention the OSTK in their ads, only 3 (16 percent) won their seats. Moreover, in this election Igor Smirnov , (later to become in December 1991 the first president of the Pridnestrovian Moldovan Republic ), first successfully ran for public office. To illustrate the point that the election signalled the change in city leadership from that of
12213-401: The Old Church Slavonic religious writings and chancellery documents, attested prior to the 16th century, along with the analysis of graphemes show that the writing of Romanian with the Cyrillic alphabet started in the second half of the 15th century. The oldest extant document in Romanian precisely dated is Neacșu's letter (1521) and was written using the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet , which
12390-517: The PMR prevented the villagers from reaching their farmland east of the road. Transnistrians are able to travel (normally without difficulty) in and out of the territory under PMR control to neighbouring Moldovan-controlled territory and to Ukraine. International air travellers rely on the airport in the Moldovan capital Chișinău , or the airport in Odesa , in Ukraine. The climate is humid continental with subtropical characteristics. Transnistria has warm summers and cool to cold winters. Precipitation
12567-469: The PMR. One city (Bender) and six villages located on the west bank (in Bessarabia region) are controlled by the PMR, but are considered by Moldova as a separate municipality (Bender and village of Proteagailovca ) or part of the Căușeni District (five villages in three communes). Tense situations have periodically surfaced due to these territorial disputes, such as in 2005, when Transnistrian forces entered Vasilievca, in 2006 around Varnița, and in 2007 in
12744-555: The People movement were outlawed at the beginning of 2000 and eventually dissolved. Romanian language Romanian (obsolete spelling: Roumanian ; endonym : limba română [ˈlimba roˈmɨnə] , or românește [romɨˈneʃte] , lit. ' in Romanian ' ) is the official and main language of Romania and Moldova . Romanian is part of the Eastern Romance sub-branch of Romance languages ,
12921-626: The Popular Front and the parliamentary leadership, or with the OSTK-led opposition. There was no significant correlation between apparatus work and either movement. In Transnistria, the OSTK was extremely successful, particularly in Tiraspol. Looking at the electoral ads run in the Tiraspol Dnestrovskaia Pravda reveals that of the 40 people who ran ads in that newspaper between January and March 1990, 22 (55 percent) mentioned membership of
13098-515: The Popular Front had considerably more allies. The Communist Party had a more disappointing if not insignificant showing, with 53 of the parliamentary seats going to members of the party apparatus and with its members comprising 83 percent of those elected. However, what is of interest to this chapter is that in 1990 as the republic polarized to the point of schism in September, those apparatus workers that were elected quickly aligned themselves with either
13275-417: The Popular Front of Moldova. In both Transnistria and western Moldova, the winter of 1989–1990 was strained. In Chișinău, a popular movement for national revival and national sovereignty was in full force. Activists defied the communist party openly and consistently and in some cases, communist officials and symbols were publicly attacked. In Transnistria, activists for the opposing social movement were less of
13452-544: The Roman central authority the language evolved into Common Romanian . This proto-language then came into close contact with the Slavic languages and subsequently divided into Aromanian , Megleno-Romanian , Istro-Romanian , and Daco-Romanian. Due to limited attestation between the 6th and 16th century, entire stages from its history are re-constructed by researchers, often with proposed relative chronologies and loose limits. From
13629-473: The Romanian colloquial name of the region, Transnistria , meaning "beyond the Dniester". The term Transnistria was used in relation to eastern Moldova for the first time in the year 1989, in the election slogan of the deputy and member of the Popular Front of Moldova Leonida Lari : I will throw out the invaders, aliens and mankurt over the Dniester, I will throw them out of Transnistria, and you,
13806-640: The Romanian dialect spoken north of the Danube is called lingua Daco-Romana to emphasize its origin and its area of use, which includes the former Roman province of Dacia , although it is spoken also south of the Danube, in Dobruja , the Timok Valley and northern Bulgaria. This article deals with the Romanian (i.e. Daco-Romanian) language, and thus only its dialectal variations are discussed here. The differences between
13983-770: The Romanian language. Examples of Romanian acts that had a great success in non-Romanophone countries are the bands O-Zone (with their No. 1 single Dragostea Din Tei , also known as Numa Numa , across the world in 2003–2004), Akcent (popular in the Netherlands, Poland and other European countries), Activ (successful in some Eastern European countries), DJ Project (popular as clubbing music) SunStroke Project (known by viral video " Epic Sax Guy ") and Alexandra Stan (worldwide no.1 hit with " Mr. Saxobeat ") and Inna as well as high-rated movies like 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days , The Death of Mr. Lazarescu , 12:08 East of Bucharest or California Dreamin' (all of them with awards at
14160-475: The Romanian neuter became a mixture of masculine and feminine. The verb morphology of Romanian has shown the same move towards a compound perfect and future tense as the other Romance languages. Compared with the other Romance languages , during its evolution, Romanian simplified the original Latin tense system. Romanian is spoken mostly in Central , South-Eastern , and Eastern Europe , although speakers of
14337-519: The Romanians, are the real owners of this long-suffering land ... We will make them speak Romanian, respect our language, our culture! The documents of the government of Moldova refer to the region as Stînga Nistrului (in full, Unitățile Administrativ-Teritoriale din Stînga Nistrului ) meaning "Left (Bank) of the Dniester" (in full, "Administrative-territorial unit(s) of the Left Bank of
14514-584: The Slavs (mainly Russians and Ukrainians) and Gagauz , to leave or be expelled from Moldova. On 31 August 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the Moldavian SSR adopted Moldovan as the official language with Russian retained only for secondary purposes, returned Moldovan to the Latin alphabet , and declared a shared Moldovan-Romanian linguistic identity. As plans for major cultural changes in Moldova were made public, tensions rose further. Ethnic minorities felt threatened by
14691-448: The Soviet Union elections in 1990 brought a rush of new blood into Soviet government and Moldova was no exception. The registration of candidates was done in a new and more open manner and candidates had an unprecedented freedom to campaign and distinguish themselves from competitors. All in all one specialist has judged the 1990 elections in Moldova to be relatively "quite open." When the votes were counted after February 25, republic wide,
14868-522: The Soviet Union should Moldova seek unification with Romania or independence, the latter occurring in August 1991. Shortly afterwards, a military conflict between the two parties started in March 1992 and concluded with a ceasefire in July that year. As a part of the ceasefire agreement, a three-party (Moldova, Russia, and Transnistria) Joint Control Commission and a trilateral peacekeeping force subordinated to
15045-554: The Soviet Union. Transnistria Transnistria , officially known as the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic and locally as Pridnestrovie , is a breakaway state internationally recognized as part of Moldova . It controls most of the narrow strip of land between the Dniester river and the Moldova–Ukraine border , as well as some land on the other side of the river's bank. Its capital and largest city
15222-418: The Supreme Soviet away from its intended course. The OSTK did receive some support from local politicians in the larger eastern cities (Tiraspol, Tighina, and Rîbnița). The city governments of all three cities appealed to the Moldovan Supreme Soviet to postpone making a decision on the language question. The leaders of the communist organization in these cities, however, claimed that they did this just to defuse
15399-406: The Tighina city soviet declared its intention to hold a referendum on the creation of the Dniester Republic. The Supreme Soviet again annulled this decision and forbade the holding of such a referendum. The republican government was, however, increasingly seeing the limits of its power to control lawmakers in Transnistria. Over the objections of the authorities in Chișinău, the Tighina city soviet held
15576-698: The Transnistrian demand to maintain a Russian military presence for the next 20 years as a guarantee for the intended federation. The 5+2 format (or 5+2 talks, comprising Transnistria, Moldova, Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE, plus the United States and the EU as external observers) for negotiation was started in 2005 to deal with the problems, but without results for many years as it was suspended. In February 2011, talks were resumed in Vienna , continuing through to 2018 with some minor agreements being reached. Moldova had, by 2023, dropped
15753-401: The Transnistrian position, which sought equal status between Transnistria and Moldova, but gave Transnistria veto powers over future constitutional changes, thus encouraging Transnistria to sign it. Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin was initially supportive of the plan, but refused to sign it after internal opposition and international pressure from the OSCE and US, and after Russia had endorsed
15930-534: The Ukrainian SSR. Although exercising no direct control over the territory of Transnistria, the Moldovan government passed the "Law on Basic Provisions of the Special Legal Status of Localities from the Left Bank of the Dniester" on 22 July 2005, which established part of Transnistria (territory of Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic without Bender and without territories, which are under control of Moldova) as
16107-647: The activism of the Moldovan Movement in Support of Restructuring—a movement of the intelligentsia oriented mostly towards generalized economic and political liberalization—and the Alexei Mateevici Literary-Musical Club, which pulled together prominent cultural and political figures, activists and citizens to celebrate and discuss the language, literature and history of the Moldovans. Cultural revival
16284-488: The annexed territory with part of the former Moldavian ASSR roughly equivalent to present-day Transnistria. In 1941, after Axis forces invaded the Soviet Union in the Second World War , they defeated the Soviet troops in the region and occupied it. Romania controlled the entire region between Dniester and Southern Bug rivers, including the city of Odesa as local capital. The Romanian-administered territory, known as
16461-564: The basis of what Terry Martin has termed the Soviet "Piedmont Principle": by creating a "homeland" for Moldovans across the Romanian border , the Soviet leadership hoped to advance their claims on Romanian territory. While the role of the MASSR in the Soviet Union's eventual incorporation of this land was negligible—the Soviet ultimatum to Romania did not mention the Moldovan nation, let alone use its right to national self-determination as justification for
16638-447: The beginning of devoicing of asyllabic [u] after consonants. Text analysis revealed words that are now lost from modern vocabulary or used only in local varieties. These words were of various provenience for example: Latin ( cure - to run, mâneca - to leave), Old Church Slavonic ( drăghicame - gem, precious stone, prilăsti - to trick, to cheat), Hungarian ( bizăntui - to bear witness). The modern age of Romanian starts in 1780 with
16815-586: The big winner was the Popular Front of Moldova and their allies in the reformist wing of the Communist Party of Moldova . Of the 380 seats in the Supreme Soviet of the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, the Popular Front would control 101, or about 27 percent. The internationalists had a strong showing as well, capturing almost 80 seats—21 percent. However, while both sides claimed the support of those not formally tied to their organizations,
16992-461: The city government that the OSTK had decided to "take the responsibility on itself for the support of social order and discipline in production, and for the provision of normal life for the population of the city in the period of the deteriorating situation." In effect, the OSTK leveraged its popular support in factories and their neighborhoods as well as its institutional entrenchment to prod local government acting on their behalf in Chișinău and to warn
17169-422: The colloquial speech and writing. Outside the political arena the language is most often called "Romanian". In the breakaway territory of Transnistria, it is co-official with Ukrainian and Russian. In the 2014 census , out of the 2,804,801 people living in Moldova, 24% (652,394) stated Romanian as their most common language, whereas 56% stated Moldovan. While in the urban centers speakers are split evenly between
17346-460: The commission were created to deal with ceasefire violations. Although the ceasefire has held, the territory's political status remains unresolved: Transnistria is an unrecognized but de facto independent semi-presidential republic with its own government , parliament , military , police , postal system, currency , and vehicle registration. Its authorities have adopted a constitution , flag , national anthem , and coat of arms . After
17523-540: The country Moldovan . In December 2013, a decision of the Constitutional Court of Moldova ruled that the Declaration of Independence took precedence over the Constitution and the state language should be called Romanian. In 2023, the Moldovan parliament passed a law officially adopting the designation "Romanian" in all legal instruments, implementing the 2013 court decision. Scholars agree that Moldovan and Romanian are
17700-522: The debates that accompanied the opening of political dialogue in the late 1980s. The first was concern for the ecologic devastation that was so characteristic of Soviet industrial society. The second, and increasingly ascendant concern revolved around the Moldovan language and whether it was distinct from the Romanian language or not, and national heritage, which many felt had been trammeled by Soviet and Russian domination. These concerns found expression in
17877-566: The decree of its creation, most of the 14th Guards Army 's military equipment was to be retained by Moldova. Starting from 2 March 1992, there was concerted military action between Moldova and Transnistria. The fighting intensified throughout early 1992. The former Soviet 14th Guards Army entered the conflict in its final stage, opening fire against Moldovan forces; approximately 700 people were killed. Moldova has since then exercised no effective control or influence on Transnistrian authorities. A ceasefire agreement, signed on 21 July 1992, has held to
18054-408: The discontinuation thesis (it developed in right-Danube provinces only), and the "as-well-as" thesis that supports the language development on both sides of the Danube. Between the 6th and 8th century, following the accumulated tendencies inherited from the vernacular spoken in this large area and, to a much smaller degree, the influences from native dialects , and in the context of a lessened power of
18231-562: The eastern bank, the village of Roghi , and the city of Dubăsari (situated on the eastern bank and controlled by the PMR) form a security zone along with the six villages and one city controlled by the PMR on the western bank, as well as two ( Varnița and Copanca ) on the same west bank under Moldovan control. The security situation inside it is subject to the Joint Control Commission rulings. The main transportation route in Transnistria
18408-412: The eastern cities. During the strike, the city committees and city soviets of the eastern cities had allowed the OSTK to deeply insinuate itself into city government structures; after the strike, city communist leaders tried to take the initiative back into their own hands. For example, cooperation with the OSTK in the city soviets led deputies in Tiraspol, Tighina, and Rîbnița to suspend the introduction of
18585-472: The election in July and then used the results as a further justification for separatist action. This pattern continued throughout the year. Quickly moving down the unprecedented path of secession from a union republic, left-bank city and raion soviets needed a popular mandate to justify their extreme actions. They laid claim to this mandate through a referendum campaign that swept through the Dniester area in 1990. In this campaign, citizens were asked to vote on
18762-438: The end of August 1989, STKs had de facto control over their factories throughout much of Transnistria . Often they worked with or were dominated by, factory management. Occasionally, they effectively ousted unsympathetic directors or staff. Many that were to become active in the strike campaign had been suspicious of the language legislation from the beginning—they suspected this to be the first step towards "nationalization" of
18939-503: The establishment of legal and state relations, although the memorandum's provisions were interpreted differently by the two governments. In November 2003, Dmitry Kozak , a counselor of Russian president Vladimir Putin , proposed a memorandum on the creation of an asymmetric federal Moldovan state, with Moldova holding a majority and Transnistria being a minority part of the federation. Known as "the Kozak memorandum ", it did not coincide with
19116-501: The events that culminated in the creation of the Transnistrian state. Social mobilization came late to the eastern cities that became the centers of pro-Pridnestrovian activity (mid-1989) and it followed a different model than in did in western (Bessarabian) Moldova. Social mobilization in Tiraspol and Tighina (Bender) was mostly achieved through workplace networks called Work Collective Councils Work Collective Soviets ( sovety trudovykh kollektivov , STKs). The mobilization in Transnistria
19293-490: The explosive situation. For example, Evgenii Berdnikov of Rȋbniţa said "We could not stop this process," at a meeting with Moldovan First Secretary, Semion Grossu. "We were only trying to direct it out of the hands of incompetent people that play on people's emotions." The concession made, he explained, could be quietly dropped at a later time. While the strikes were extremely effective in paralyzing Moldovan industry, there were many instances were individuals and groups happy with
19470-566: The face of the Moldovan declaration of sovereignty from the Soviet Union and with a growing mandate from the referendum campaign sweeping the Dniester region, delegates to the Second Congress of Transnistrian Deputies announced the creation of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. With the declaration of the PMSSR, city and raion soviets throughout Transnistria convened plenums and discussed
19647-520: The factory committee was not in control of the situation. "Between the workers there had been fights and scandals. A part of the weavers, about 1000 people, want to return to work and the rest were against them." In light of the potentially explosive situation, the factory director asked the factory and city strike committees to consider reopening. In this case, the city strike committee conceded. Far more common, however, national revivalist individuals were isolated and vulnerable. Ilie Ilaşcu, famous for having
19824-540: The fate of the increasingly weak Moldovan First Secretary. At the end of a year that had seen Semion Grossu and his organization pummeled from both the national revivalist right and the "ultrarevolutionary" internationalist left, Moscow replaced the First Secretary in a snap Central Committee plenum in mid-November. The February 1990 elections proved to be a turning point in the conflict between Moldova and Transnistria. In these elections, Moldovian national revivalists won
20001-413: The first Romanian school, and Ion Heliade Rădulescu . The end of this period is marked by the first printing of magazines and newspapers in Romanian, in particular Curierul Românesc and Albina Românească . Starting from 1831 and lasting until 1880 the modern phase is characterized by the development of literary styles: scientific, administrative, and belletristic . It quickly reached a high point with
20178-431: The first secretaries of the eastern cities convened plenums of the city committees and sessions of the city soviets. Some OSTK members were allowed to attend and participate, but Semion Grossu attended in order to keep an eye on the proceedings and make sure the sessions went as planned. The local communist party meetings called on the city soviets to bring local law into accordance with republican law and decisions adopted by
20355-429: The government in Chișinău. Occasionally rural loyalists expressed their opposition with appeals and rallies. This was the case on 16 September 1990 when a meeting against the PMSSR was held in the village Lunga, near Dubăsari, with participants from all over Transnistria. The loyalist raion soviets expressed their opposition by flying the Moldovan flag, and refusing to accept the jurisdiction of Tiraspol. On 17 September
20532-473: The gradual development of bilingualism . Russian continued to develop as the official language of privilege, whereas Romanian remained the principal vernacular. The period from 1905 to 1917 was one of increasing linguistic conflict spurred by an increase in Romanian nationalism. In 1905 and 1906, the Bessarabian zemstva asked for the re-introduction of Romanian in schools as a "compulsory language", and
20709-479: The identity of the Moldovan language and whether it was separate from the Romanian language or not, the alleged artificiality of the use of the Cyrillic alphabet for this supposed Moldovan language, and need for Moldovan to be given the status of official language of the republic. By June 1988, the Moldovan republican government began taking its cue from social movement leaders and discussing these issues, touching off
20886-592: The influence of the Mukacheve eparchy in Ukraine. The language spoken during this period had a phonological system of seven vowels and twenty-nine consonants. Particular to Old Romanian are the distribution of /z/, as the allophone of /dz/ from Common Romanian , in the Wallachian and south-east Transylvanian varieties, the presence of palatal sonorants /ʎ/ and /ɲ/, nowadays preserved only regionally in Banat and Oltenia , and
21063-438: The invasion—the former autonomous republic did provide a Soviet elite ready to assume leadership in the new union republic. In the second half of the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev set the political context for the war in Moldova and redefined the political process in the union republics with a series of reforms that comprised his program for perestroika . While intended to reinvigorate the Soviet system, perestroika also undermined
21240-460: The language and use of the demonym Romanians ( Români ) for speakers of this language predates the foundation of the modern Romanian state. Romanians always used the general term rumân / român or regional terms like ardeleni (or ungureni ), moldoveni or munteni to designate themselves. Both the name of rumână or rumâniască for the Romanian language and the self-designation rumân/român are attested as early as
21417-556: The language can be found all over the world, mostly due to emigration of Romanian nationals and the return of immigrants to Romania back to their original countries. Romanian speakers account for 0.5% of the world's population, and 4% of the Romance-speaking population of the world. Romanian is the single official and national language in Romania and Moldova, although it shares the official status at regional level with other languages in
21594-401: The language laws and deputies in Tiraspol and Rȋbniţa to agree to a referendum on the creation of a Transnistrian autonomous republic. Once the strike was over, however, communist leaders attempted to roll back these concessions. The republican communist party leaders in Chișinău were especially keen to see this happen and put pressure on local communists to repeal "illegal" decisions taken during
21771-430: The language legislation managed to win the day and keep their factories open. Moreover, some workers organized anti-strike committees to fight against the activities of the OSTK. Supreme Soviet Deputy from Tiraspol and firm supporter of the language laws, Leonida Dicusar, talked in September about the extreme pressure experienced by those brave few who worked to keep the factories open in the face of overwhelming odds. "I had
21948-449: The language legislation, more effective activity began in the workplace. STKs became the focus around which opposition activity turned in the early part of the conflict. In Transnistria, close-knit work collectives were ready-made institutional alternatives to the Communist Party cells—also omnipresent at the Soviet workplace. From 1989 to 1991, many Transnistrian party members handed in their party cards or simply stopped paying their dues. By
22125-414: The language question and make recommendations. Staffed as it was with Moldova's Romanianized cultural elite, the commission recommended the republican government accept all three points of the national revivalists' demands. (That is (1) the identity of the Moldovan and Romanian language, (2) the artificiality of the use of the Cyrillic alphabet for the Moldovan language, and (3) need for Moldovan to be given
22302-531: The language, working together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Department for Romanians Abroad. Since 2013, the Romanian Language Day is celebrated on every 31 August . Romanian is the official language of the Republic of Moldova. The 1991 Declaration of Independence named the official language Romanian, and the Constitution of Moldova as originally adopted in 1994 named the state language of
22479-592: The largest Romanian-speaking community in the Middle East was found in Israel, where Romanian was spoken by 5% of the population. Romanian is also spoken as a second language by people from Arabic-speaking countries who have studied in Romania. It is estimated that almost half a million Middle Eastern Arabs studied in Romania during the 1980s. Small Romanian-speaking communities are to be found in Kazakhstan and Russia. Romanian
22656-649: The late 15th century and ended in the early decades of the 18th century, by which time Romanian had begun to be regularly used by the Church. The oldest Romanian texts of a literary nature are religious manuscripts ( Codicele Voronețean , Psaltirea Scheiană ), translations of essential Christian texts. These are considered either propagandistic results of confessional rivalries, for instance between Lutheranism and Calvinism , or as initiatives by Romanian monks stationed at Peri Monastery in Maramureș to distance themselves from
22833-500: The local military personnel, grew better prepared than the loyalist Moldovan police in Transnistria. Police stations were captured, policemen were evicted, and in extreme cases workers' battalions and police traded fire. Skirmishes in November 1990, and September and December 1991 witnessed continued Moldovan inability to reassert sovereignty in the region. Throughout the first half of 1992 the violence continued to escalate and culminated in
23010-499: The local soviets supported acceptance of the language laws in Transnistria. Communist-run state media also criticized the OSTK and local communists attempted to shut down OSTK newspapers, a measure that prevented the organization from putting out its publication for much of late 1989. The situation was even more tense in Chișinău in late 1989. Festivals on 7 November commemorating the Russian Revolution and 10 November celebrating
23187-539: The majority prevailed with the support of only 49 of the 86 deputies (57%). While results were more one sided elsewhere, everywhere confusion abounded. Many governmental institutions—the police, public prosecutors, judges—remained loyal to the government in Chișinău; some enterprises or villages defected from one local soviet to another to end up on the right side; paramilitary men competed with police to provide law and order, and during 1991 began attempting to evict them from their former stations. Even in Tiraspol, consolidation
23364-457: The media regarding the forgery of the census results. The Constitution of the Republic of Serbia determines that in the regions of the Republic of Serbia inhabited by national minorities, their own languages and scripts shall be officially used as well, in the manner established by law. The Statute of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina determines that, together with the Serbian language and
23541-409: The northern dialect. Two other languages, Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian , developed from the southern version of Common Romanian. These two languages are now spoken in lands to the south of the Jireček Line . Of the features that individualize Common Romanian, inherited from Latin or subsequently developed, of particular importance are: The use of the denomination Romanian ( română ) for
23718-427: The official language with the Constitution of 1923 . Romanian has preserved a part of the Latin declension , but whereas Latin had six cases , from a morphological viewpoint, Romanian has only three: the nominative / accusative , genitive / dative , and marginally the vocative . Romanian nouns also preserve the neuter gender , although instead of functioning as a separate gender with its own forms in adjectives,
23895-439: The overall lexis was enriched with foreign words and internal constructs, in accordance with the history and development of the society and the diversification in semantic fields, the fundamental lexicon—the core vocabulary used in everyday conversation—remains governed by inherited elements from the Latin spoken in the Roman provinces bordering Danube , without which no coherent sentence can be made. Romanian descended from
24072-401: The passage of the language legislation—but it did provide a watershed in Transnistrian history; after the strike, the left bank of the Dniester, and in particular the city of Tiraspol, were essentially controlled by a group of engineers and factory managers hostile to the government in Chișinău, a group that controls Transnistria to this day. In the days immediately before the language legislation
24249-475: The perestroika reforms. They were intended to foster democratization and increase efficiency in Soviet industry. However, they were also ready-made forums for debate and provided a structure which activists used to take control of Moldovan industry in late 1989. The national revivalist movements were created essentially from scratch and led by cultural figures. The "internationalist" (pro-Soviet) movement in Transnistria took advantage of workplace institutions to build
24426-439: The police and the court system were largely still loyal to the government in Chișinău, Supreme Soviet deputies were not willing to provoke the sort of outcry that would certainly have arisen if Moldovan officials had gone as far as arresting leading Transnistrian politicians. In the event, the Supreme Soviet continued to fume as events continued to progress in Transnistria. However, it was at a loss as to how to stop them. In mid-May,
24603-468: The possibility of integrating themselves into the new republic. While many of the soviet deputies were those same delegates that participated in the Second Congress, these votes were not always uncontested affairs; in the case of the Dubossary raion , the soviet refused to place itself under the jurisdiction of the Dniester state. In the Dubossary city soviet, an organ with OSTK preponderance but not dominance,
24780-473: The present day. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is trying to facilitate a negotiated settlement. Under OSCE auspices, on 8 May 1997, Moldovan President Petru Lucinschi and Transnistrian President Igor Smirnov , signed the "Memorandum on the principles of normalization of relations between the Republic of Moldova and Transnistria", also known as the "Primakov Memorandum", sustaining
24957-480: The printing in 1780 of Elementa linguae daco-romanae sive valachicae , the pre-modern phase was characterized by the publishing of school textbooks, appearance of first normative works in Romanian, numerous translations, and the beginning of a conscious stage of re-latinization of the language. Notable contributions, besides that of the Transylvanian School , are the activities of Gheorghe Lazăr , founder of
25134-655: The printing in Vienna of a very important grammar book titled Elementa linguae daco-romanae sive valachicae . The author of the book, Samuil Micu-Klein , and the revisor, Gheorghe Șincai , both members of the Transylvanian School , chose to use Latin as the language of the text and presented the phonetical and grammatical features of Romanian in comparison to its ancestor. The Modern age of Romanian language can be further divided into three phases: pre-modern or modernizing between 1780 and 1830, modern phase between 1831 and 1880, and contemporary from 1880 onwards. Beginning with
25311-518: The printing of Dacia Literară , a journal founded by Mihail Kogălniceanu and representing a literary society, which together with other publications like Propășirea and Gazeta de Transilvania spread the ideas of Romantic nationalism and later contributed to the formation of other societies that took part in the Revolutions of 1848 . Their members and those that shared their views are collectively known in Romania as "of '48"( pașoptiști ),
25488-615: The prospects of removing Russian as the official language , which served as the medium of interethnic communication, and by the possible future reunification of Moldova and Romania, as well as the ethnocentric rhetoric of the PFM. The Yedinstvo (Unity) Movement, established by the Slavic population of Moldova, pressed for equal status for both the Russian and Moldovan languages. Transnistria's ethnic and linguistic composition differed significantly from most of
25665-472: The regional varieties are small, limited to regular phonetic changes, few grammar aspects, and lexical particularities. There is a single written and spoken standard (literary) Romanian language used by all speakers, regardless of region. Like most natural languages, Romanian dialects are part of a dialect continuum . The dialects of Romanian are also referred to as 'sub-dialects' and are distinguished primarily by phonetic differences. Romanians themselves speak of
25842-478: The republic at the expense of "their country," the Soviet Union. However, on 10 August 1989 I. M. Zaslavskii, a deputy to the Moldavian Supreme Soviet and resident of the Transnistrian city of Tiraspol, leaked a new draft of the law to the factory newspaper of the "Tochlitmash" Tiraspol Machine-Building Factory im. Kirova. Seeing that the new version would establish Moldovan as the only official language of
26019-554: The republic; their numbers almost doubled within four days." This level of mobilization was not long sustained. In part convinced that the language legislation would not be repealed, and in part reassured by the sympathetic conclusions of a commission sent by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union , the OSTK (temporarily embodied in the United Republican Strike Committee) decided to end the strike on 15 September 1989. The strike failed in its immediate goal—to prevent
26196-432: The rest of Moldova. The proportion of ethnic Russians and Ukrainians was especially high and an overall majority of the population, some of them Moldovans, spoke Russian as their mother tongue. The nationalist PFM won the first free parliamentary elections in the Moldavian SSR in early 1990, and its agenda started slowly to be implemented. On 2 September 1990, the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (PMSSR)
26373-543: The same language, with the glottonym "Moldovan" used in certain political contexts. It has been the sole official language since the adoption of the Law on State Language of the Moldavian SSR in 1989. This law mandates the use of Moldovan in all the political, economic, cultural and social spheres, as well as asserting the existence of a "linguistic Moldo-Romanian identity". It is also used in schools, mass media, education and in
26550-576: The situation in the area under Romanian control, implementing a process of Romanianization . During the Romanian occupation of 1941–44, between 150,000 and 250,000 Ukrainian and Romanian Jews were deported to Transnistria; the majority were murdered or died from other causes in the ghettos and concentration camps of the Governorate. After the Red Army advanced into the area in 1944, Soviet authorities executed, exiled or imprisoned hundreds of inhabitants of
26727-574: The situation, and in 2024 the Supreme Council was convened for the first time since 2006, with the council requesting economic assistance from Russia, and stating that Moldova was actively committing a genocide in the region. The harsh language towards Moldova, coupled with the Russian-backed Șor protests , and an attempted coup plotted by the Wagner Group has shifted Moldova further towards
26904-469: The state language and push the Supreme Soviet to recognize the identity of Moldovan and Romanian while opponents mobilized to protect the legal status quo. A further draft leaked in August further escalated tensions because its opponents believed that it was even more pro-nationalist and radical than the first draft. The law was passed in a stormy Supreme Soviet session on 31 August 1989. It declared that "The state language of Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic
27081-419: The status of official language of the republic. See above.) Armed with these recommendations, the Supreme Soviet asked for the draft legislation to be presented in March for "public discussion" of the proposals "before the next session of the Supreme Soviet" in August. This move did nothing to diffuse the inevitable tension involved with the very project. Proponents mobilized to expand the legally protected role of
27258-417: The strength of key institutions which provided for central control of the Soviet Union. Inadvertently undermining the power of the communist party, Gorbachev set the stage for a devolution of power into a federated state structure which essentially resulted in the devolution of power to the governments of the fifteen Soviet republics. This devolution of centralized power to republican legislatures ( "soviets" in
27435-570: The strike movement came in September 1989 in the immediate aftermath of the MSSR Supreme Soviet's passage of the language legislation. Vladimir Socor, analyst for the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, places the total number of strikers in the MSSR at close to 200,000, writing, "By August 29, when the session of the Moldavian Supreme Soviet convened, more than 100,000 workers and employees at over 100 enterprises were on strike in
27612-581: The strike. In a meeting in October, Associate Chair of the Presidium of the Moldovan Supreme Soviet, Victor Pușcaș , in the presence of Communist Party First Secretary, Semion Grossu , berated local communists for losing control of the situation in Transnistria. It would look better for the city soviets to repeal all illegal decisions by themselves, he concluded. "However," he warned, "if you cannot get them to repeal these resolutions, we will do it for them." Back home,
27789-624: The term 5+2 in diplomatic discussions. After the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in March 2014, the head of the Transnistrian parliament asked to join Russia . After the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ukraine sealed its border with Transnistria, which had been the primary route for goods to enter the region. As such, Transnistria is wholly reliant on Moldova to allow imports through its own border. Transnistrian politicians have grown increasingly anxious about
27966-615: The terminology of the Soviet Union) was matched by a simultaneous explosion of mass participation in the now open debate about the Soviet future. In the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, as elsewhere in the Soviet Union, political activity was expressed in various ways, including by organizing groups and clubs independent of the government that had long withheld the right of association to any sort of civil organization. Two sets of concerns were particularly prominent in
28143-552: The time formed part of the Kingdom of Romania . One of the reasons for the creation of the Moldavian ASSR was the desire of the Soviet Union at the time to eventually incorporate Bessarabia. On 28 June 1940, the USSR annexed Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina from Romania under the terms of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact , and on 2 August 1940 the Supreme Soviet of the USSR created the Moldavian SSR by combining part of
28320-473: The two names (with the capital Chișinău showing a strong preference for the name "Romanian", i.e. 3:2), in the countryside hardly a quarter of Romanian/Moldovan speakers indicated Romanian as their native language. Unofficial results of this census first showed a stronger preference for the name Romanian, however the initial reports were later dismissed by the Institute for Statistics, which led to speculations in
28497-495: The unrecognised state of Transnistria , Moldovan is one of the official languages. However, unlike all other dialects of Romanian, this variety of Moldovan is written in Cyrillic script . Romanian is taught in some areas that have Romanian minority communities, such as Vojvodina in Serbia, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Hungary. The Romanian Cultural Institute (ICR) has since 1992 organised summer courses in Romanian for language teachers. There are also non-Romanians who study Romanian as
28674-428: The use of Romanian in official government publications, public education and legal contracts. Advertisements as well as other public messages must bear a translation of foreign words, while trade signs and logos shall be written predominantly in Romanian. The Romanian Language Institute (Institutul Limbii Române), established by the Ministry of Education of Romania, promotes Romanian and supports people willing to study
28851-435: The use of the term "Transnistria" within the region, imposing a fine of 360 rubles or up to 15 days imprisonment for using the name in public. In 1924, the Moldavian ASSR was proclaimed within the Ukrainian SSR . The ASSR included today's Transnistria (4,100 km ; 1,600 sq mi) and an area (4,200 km ; 1,600 sq mi) to the northeast around the city of Balta , but nothing from Bessarabia , which at
29028-452: The writing of its first grammar books, represents the modern age of the language, during which time the Latin alphabet became official, the literary language was standardized, and a large number of words from Modern Latin and other Romance languages entered the lexis. In the process of language evolution from fewer than 2500 attested words from Late Antiquity to a lexicon of over 150,000 words in its contemporary form, Romanian showed
29205-466: Was a reaction to the national revivalist mobilization in Bessarabian Moldova. Russian-speaking workers in the eastern factories and Moldovans with a strong identification with the Soviet state used work collective councils to organize opposition to national revivalists in the Moldovan capital. The councils were created throughout the Soviet Union in 1987 with the "Law on State Enterprises" as part of
29382-480: Was ceded to the Soviet Union as a result of an ultimatum , it was combined with a strip of land on the left bank of the Dniester which had formed the nucleus of a Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR), an autonomous republic of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic with Tiraspol as its executive capital, throughout the interwar period . The newly fused territory became
29559-411: Was considered by the Moldovan Supreme Soviet the OSTK began issuing a series of very credible threats to the local and republican leadership. At the same time as it was organizing industrial strikes the central committee of the OSTK began sending resolutions to the local government of Tiraspol demanding that the city leadership recognize and support OSTK control over factories and eventually flatly informed
29736-550: Was declared wanted by the Security Service of Ukraine due to suspicion of collaboration and encroachment on the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Transnistria is a semi-presidential republic with a powerful presidency. The president is directly elected for a maximum of two consecutive five-year terms. The current President is Vadim Krasnoselsky . The Supreme Council is a unicameral legislature. It has 43 members who are elected for 5-year terms. Elections take place within
29913-557: Was just one of the issues championed by such informals in early 1988. However, during the course of that year events around the Soviet Union, and particularly the bloody clashes between Armenians and Azerbaijanis in Nagorno-Karabakh and the pogrom against Armenians in Sumgait , brought issues of ethnicity increasingly to the fore in the union press. In Moldova, social movements increasingly began to focus on three issues involving language:
30090-404: Was never recognised as a Soviet republic by the authorities in either Moscow or Chișinău . In 1991, the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic succeeded the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic from which the PMSSR seceded was created in 1940 following the Soviet annexation of territory belonging to the Kingdom of Romania . When Bessarabia
30267-611: Was proclaimed as a Soviet republic by an ad hoc assembly, the Second Congress of the Peoples' Representatives of Transnistria, following a successful referendum . Violence escalated when in October 1990 the PFM called for volunteers to form armed militias to stop an autonomy referendum in Gagauzia , which had an even higher proportion of ethnic minorities. In response, volunteer militias were formed in Transnistria. In April 1990, nationalist mobs attacked ethnic Russian members of parliament, while
30444-477: Was published in Vienna in 1780. Following the annexation of Bessarabia by Russia in 1812, Moldavian was established as an official language in the governmental institutions of Bessarabia , used along with Russian, The publishing works established by Archbishop Gavril Bănulescu-Bodoni were able to produce books and liturgical works in Moldavian between 1815 and 1820. Bessarabia during the 1812–1918 era witnessed
30621-502: Was reported that Igor Smirnov collected 103.6% of the votes. The PMR government said "the government of Moldova launched a campaign aimed at convincing international observers not to attend" an election held on 11 December 2005 – but monitors from the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States election monitors ignored that and declared the ballot democratic. The opposition Narodovlastie party and Power to
30798-408: Was taken against Transnistria and the new authorities were slowly able to establish control of the region. Following the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt , the Pridnestrovian Moldavian SSR declared its independence from the Soviet Union. On 5 November 1991 Transnistria abandoned its socialist ideology and was renamed "Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic". The Transnistria War followed armed clashes on
30975-413: Was the Popular Front of Moldova (PFM) . In early 1988, the PFM demanded that the Soviet authorities declare Moldovan the only state language, return to the use of the Latin alphabet, and recognise the shared ethnic identity of Moldovans and Romanians. The more radical factions of the PFM espoused extreme anti-minority, ethnocentric and chauvinist positions, calling for minority populations, particularly
31152-456: Was to take upwards of a year. While the PMSSR was popular in Transnistria's cities, there was considerable opposition in rural communities. While OSTK supporters took control of city soviets in 1990, this was not the case in most of the raion soviets with their agricultural constituencies. The new leadership of the Grigoriopol raion soviet did not support the separatist movement and the new Dubossary and Slobozia raion soviets actively supported
31329-411: Was used until the late 19th century. The letter is the oldest testimony of Romanian epistolary style and uses a prevalent lexis of Latin origin. However, dating by watermarks has shown the Hurmuzaki Psalter is a copy from around the turn of the 16th century. The slow process of Romanian establishing itself as an official language, used in the public sphere, in literature and ecclesiastically, began in
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