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Moldovans

Population

Moldovan polls

As of the 2004 census, Moldovans constitute 76.1% of the population of Moldova. In the breakaway region of Transnistria, in the eastern part of the country, they compose a 31.9% plurality.Vladimir Socor: The Jamestown Foundation, February 28, 2007 Sometimes, albeit seldom, the term is also used to denote all citizens of Moldova, regardless of ethnicity.

In 1992, a survey by American professor William Crowther showed that 87% of the Romance-speaking population of Moldova considered itself "Moldovan", rather than "Romanian". According to a 2002 study, among self-declared Moldovans, more than 80% consider themselves as different from Romanians, and only 5% see no difference at all.

A poll conducted in Moldova by IMAS-Inc Chisinau in October 2009 presented a more detailed picture. The respondents were asked to rate the relationship between the identity of Moldovans and that of Romanians on a scale between 1 (entirely the same) to 5 (completely different). The poll showed that 26% of the entire sample, which included all ethnic groups, claimed the two identities were the same or very similar, whereas 47% claimed they were different or entirely different. The results varied significantly among different categories of subjects. For instance, 33% of the young respondents (ages 18-29) chose the same or very similar, and 44% different or very different. Among the senior respondents (aged over 60), the corresponding figures were 18.5% and 53%. One of the largest deviation from the country average was among the residents of capital Chisinau, for whom the figures were 42% and 44%.

Other former Soviet republics

The 2001 census in Ukraine counted 258,600 Moldovans. They live mostly in the Budjak region or south-west Odessa oblast and the Novoselytskyi Raion of Chernivtsi oblast, as well as (in small numbers) in other areas of Odessa oblast, Nikolaev oblast, and Kherson oblast.
, , , 2001 census results in Ukraine
In Russia, 172,330 Moldovans have been counted on the 2002 Russian census. They are concentrated mostly in Moscow, but also in some rural areas in Kuban, in southern Siberia, and Russian Far East, where they were deported generations ago.

Around 20,000 Moldovans live in Kazakhstan, mostly in the former capital Almaty, but also in some rural areas in the northern part of the country (another destination of deportations).

It should be noted that in all these countries, people who declared themselves "Romanians" were counted separately from Moldovans in the official censae results.

Romania

The alleged distribution of Moldovans.

The largest share of the territory of the historical Principality of Moldavia (around 40%) together with all its formal capitals (Târgul Moldovei, Suceava and Iaşi) and the famous painted churches are located in Romania. The river Moldova (possibly, the origin of the name of the Principality, see Etymology of Moldova) now flows entirely through Romania.

According to the Romanian census of 2002, the population of the 8 counties (the part of the Principality of Moldavia (1359-1859) that is now in Romania) is 4.7 millions. The number of people, if any, who possibly declared themselves as Moldovans in this census is impossible to know, since Moldovan is officially considered a regional identity in Romania., 2001, at UNECE website However, the Romanian-speaking inhabitants of these counties, when they refer to themselves as "Moldovan" also consider themselves integral part of the Romanian nation. There is essentially no identity controversy on this issue in Romania.

However, isolated incidents exist. In February 2007, a small group of Romanian citizens who created the "Moldovan Community in Romania" (Comunitatea moldovenilor din România) attempted unsuccessfully to gain recognition of the minority status for Moldovans from Romania. Around the same time, during a visit to Moldova, three delegates met with President Vladimir Voronin, who promised them his support. The Community was later dissolved with its members citing disagreement with Voronin's opinions as the reason behind the discontinuation of their movement.

In 1998, Constantin Simirad, the former mayor of Iaşi founded the Party of the Moldovans (Partidul Moldovenilor) which later joined the Social Democratic Party. However, Simirad never claimed that his party promoted the interests of a distinct ethnic group, but rather the regional interests in a centralized country.

In Romania, the Moldovans from Bessarabia are also called Bessarabians (basarabeni) in order to make a distinction from the Moldovans living in eastern Romania.

History

The Moldovan principality in the 15th century

Greater Romania (1918-1940). Note the two regions called "Moldavia" (German Moldau): one in Romania (between the Carpathians and the river Pruth) and one in the USSR (MASSR).

Romanian varieties (graiuri)
Blue: Southern varieties
Red: Northern varieties
The Moldovans speak the Moldovan variety

Ethnic composition of the Moldovan Republic (census 1989)

Dimitrie Cantemir in Descriptio Moldaviae (1737) mentions [original phrase construction preserved] "...Then all the country [ Dacia ] that they inhabited transformed into a Roman country, divided among Roman citizens, distincted into three parts: the one to the fringe, the one to the inside, and the one to the mountains. In the first one they accounted a part of what is now Hungary [Dimitrie Cantemir probably refers to Banat] and Wallachia. In the second one - Transylvania. And the last one contained the bigger part of our Moldavia, which is between the Danube and the Dniester and its border with Wallachia. But afterwards, when the power of Romans started to diminish, Moldavia and the Roman settlers were plundered by the frequent invasions of the barbarians, that is of Sarmatians, of Huns and of Goths. And they hardened the Roman settlers to run to the mountains and to look for refuge in the parts of Maramureş away from the mastership of the barbarians. And after they lived there several hundred years under their own rules and lords, being safe because of the difficulty of the terrain they were in, they considered afterwards, when the inhabitants started to multiply, [comes the story of Dragoş of Bedeu] (...) and they called upon Dragoş to be the first ruler of this land. So, because the country with its political organization has been created in this way, again part of the inheritance of its masters, those that were masters before, therefore the Dacian and the Roman name was replaced, being called from now on Moldova [Moldavia], from the river Molda, by the foreigners, as well as by its inhabitants; but this name is not accustomed in every place, because the Turks many times entering Moldavia, in order to win other countries from the neighbors in Europe, they called Moldavians Ak-Vlachs [white Vlachs as opposed to Kara-Vlachs = black Vlachs = Vallachians (...) Poles and Russians, that border the Dacians on the other side, call Moldavians Volokhs, that is Italians, while the Vlachs that live across the mountains they call munteni, or people on the other side of mountains." (Descriptio Moldaviae, pages 8-10)

Until the 1920s, specialists generally considered the Moldovans a subgroup or regional group of the Romanian ethnos. After 1924, Soviet authorities began to emphasize a distinct Moldovan language, history and culture, and to support the claim that Moldovans constitute a separate ethnic group. King, pg. 3
Soviet policy on the Moldovan language was not fixed: there were two intervals (1932-1937 and in the mid-1950s) during which Soviet scholars declared the two languages were the same.

Numerous Romanians, as well as a part of the Moldovan population, claim that external interference rather than any actual differences has led to Moldova's increasingly separate identity. Despite this, the 2004 census results reported that out of the 3,383,332 people living in Moldova, 16.5% (558,508) chose Romanian as their mother tongue, whereas 60% chose Moldovan. While 37% of all urban Romanian/Moldovan speakers chose Romanian as their mother tongue, in the countryside this percentage was just under 15.National Bureau of Statistics of the Republic of Moldova: These language numbers are higher than people choosing Romanian rather than Moldovan ethnicity, reflecting the fact that a substantial number of people choose to call their native language Romanian while simultaneously preferring to be called Moldovans as individuals.

Religion

The major denomination in Moldova is Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The majority of Moldovan Orthodox Christians belong to the Moldovan Orthodox Church, a branch of the Russian Orthodox Church, while a minority belongs to the Metropolis of Bessarabia, a branch of the Romanian Orthodox Church. Both bodies are in full communion, the dispute between them being purely territorial and political. It revolves around the succession of the pre-World War II Metropolitan See of Bessarabia. This remains an open issue between the Russian and Romanian Orthodox Churches. As of 2007, the Moldovan Orthodox Church has 1255 parishes, while the Metropolis of Bessarabia has 219.

The origin of the conflict lies in the international preferences of Moldovan politicians: rapprochement towards Russia or towards Romania. Immediately after Moldova declared independence from the Soviet Union (1991), the Romanian Orthodox Church reactivated its own branch, the autonomous Metropolis of Bessarabia, which was active in Bessarabia during the time it was under Romanian administration (1918-1940, 1941-44). A year later, the Moldovan government opposed this establishment and officially recognized the Romanian church only in 2002, following a 2001 European Court of Human Rights decision.

Moldovan ethnos theory and the Romanian identity

Moldovan ethnos theory

In the past, the term Moldavian or Moldovan has been used to refer to the population of the historical Principality of Moldavia. However the term had gained an ethnic connotation by the 20th century: in May 1917, at a congress of the Bessarabian teachers, a dispute arose over the identification of the people from Bessarabia: a group protested against being called "Romanians", affirming they were "not Romanian", but "Moldavian", while another group, led by Alexei Mateevici, supported the view that the Moldavians are part of the Romanian nation.

After 1924, this direction was supported by Soviet sociologists, against the one that claimed identity between Moldovans and Romanians. On December 19, 2003, the Moldovan Parliament adopted "The Concept on National Policy of the Republic of Moldova" which pro-Romanian critics have accused as a revival of the Soviet-style Moldovenist theories. The document states that Moldovans and Romanians are two distinct peoples that speak two similar languages, Romanians form an ethnic minority in Moldova, and that the Republic of Moldova is the legitimate successor to the Principality.

Romanian identity

On the other side of the debate, the arguments go that the self-designation of Romanians living in Transylvania, Wallachia and the Principality of Moldova as Romans is mentioned in scholarly works as early as the 16th century, such as works of Italian humanists travelling to those lands. Thus, Tranquillo Andronico writes in 1534 that Vlachs "now call themselves Romans". In 1532, Francesco della Valle accompanying Governor Aloisio Gritti to Transylvania, Wallachia and Moldavia notes that Romanians preserved the name of the Romans (Romani) and "they call themselves in their language Romei". Ferrante Capeci writes around 1575 that the inhabitants of these countries call themselves “Romanesci”, Other evidence about the name "Romanians" comes from authors having lived in the these principalities, such as Anton Verancsics, who writes around 1570 that Romanians living in Transylvania, Moldavia and Wallachia call themselves "Romans"

As the appellative "Romanian" was gaining more and more popularity throughout the western Ottoman-dominated Moldavia during the 19th century, its introduction in Bessarabia, a province of the Russian Empire at the time, was welcomed mostly by the Romanian-oriented elite, while the majority of local population continued to use the old ethnonym "Moldavians".

Modern controversy

In Romania, there was no Moldovan ethnicity reported in the 2002 census because people whose self-identification is considered regional by the Romanian government having been counted as Romanians.
In the CIA World Factbook section on Moldova, a single entry "Moldovan/Romanian" is used.

The group of experts from the international census observation Mission to the Republic of Moldova described the Moldovan census as "generally conducted in a professional manner", but consider that "there were a few topics in the census that were potentially more problematic":

The expert group considered that the released total figure may actually be somewhat higher than the real population size of the country because it included at least some Moldovans who had been living abroad over one year at the time of the census and who had been enumerated in the census.

The expert group concluded that the items in the questionnaire dealing with nationality and language proved to be the most sensitive ones, particularly with reference to the recording of responses to these questions as being "Moldovan" or "Romanian". Seven of the ten teams of observers had reported cases where enumerators encouraged respondents to declare that they were Moldovan rather than Romanian. Moreover, the reports from the field also showed that even within the same family there often seemed to be some confusion about these terms. Since problems of this type had been reported by the teams of observers in many different parts of the country, and in fairly large number, the expert group concluded that special care would be required by the National Statistics Bureau to enable it to assess the quality of the data on nationality/ethnicity.

The expert group recommended that the Moldovan National Bureau of Statistics carry out an evaluation study, offered their assistance in doing so, and indicated their intention of further studying the matter themselves.