Nationalities Papers, Vol. 26, No.

1, 1998

CARVING A MOLDAVIAN IDENTITY OUT OF HISTORY

Wim van Meurs
A Mystery and a Miracle in Historythe Moldavian Nation1 "For what we all are, really, is elegant scarecrows on fields of words."2 Gabriel Liiceanu's metaphor of "discourse" is particularly revealing for the case of the Moldavian nation. When the field is already covered with scarecrows, a new one will have trouble finding a free spot and functioning properly. Rivaling nationalist and communist interpretations of Moldavian history have left little free space for an original view: historical facts have been interpreted and reinterpreted time and time again, so it has become increasingly difficult to create new meanings and to find fresh words. No matter how convincing arguments regarding the relations between nationbuilding, modernization, statebuilding and centralization may be on a theoretical level, on close scrutiny national discourses appear first and foremost as power assets in the hands of politicians. In the twentieth century, political regimes have become aware of the ability to interfere in nationbuilding processes and have tried to construct identities for latecomers or reconstruct the identity of established nations. This article assumes that nations are historical phenomena and socio-political constructions. Efforts to construct a Moldavian identity are first and foremost efforts to carve a Moldavian part out of Romanian history. The first question is whether the "origins" of Moldavian nationbuilding are to be found in nineteenth century Bessarabia or in the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Republic of the interwar years. Next a survey is provided of the four pillars of the Moldavian national mythethnogenesis, language, state and cultureand the various historical interpretations based on this myth after the Second World War. A description of the collapse of the four pillars and the myth as a whole in the late 1980s leads to the most recent efforts on the part of the post-Soviet Snegur regime to recreate the Moldavian national identity. A new Moldavian myth would reinforce the idea of an independent Moldavia, but most facts and interpretations in the field of Moldavian history have already been taken by at least one other scarecrow. A Tsarist Invention? At the end of the eighteenth century, the expanding Russian Empire incorporated the first territories inhabited by Romanians. The Austro-Russian war against the Ottoman Empire (1787-1792) left the Tsar in command of the territory between the Bug and the lower reaches of the Dnestr. The Third Polish Partition three years later added
0090-5992/98/010039-18 1998 Association for the Study of Nationalities

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the upper course of the Dnestr to Russia. The Dnestr thus became the border between the Russian Empire and the Moldavian Principality, which belonged to the Ottoman Empire. At that time all three Romanian PrincipalitiesTransylvania, Wallachia and Moldaviawere under foreign domination. Transylvania in the northwest belonged to the Habsburg Empire, while the princes of Wallachia in the south and Moldavia in the northeast were vassals of the Sultan in Constantinople. Since its foundation in the fourteenth century, the Moldavian Principality had expanded from the old capital of Suceava in Bukovina towards the Black Sea. In the early fifteenth century, Moldavian landlords and peasants cast a covetous eye on the fertile but almost uninhabited lands on the left bank of the Dnestr. Two hundred years later, the Russian conquerors found a territory with a small but predominantly Romanian population.3 The spoils of the next Russo-Turkish war (1806-1812) fell short of Tsar Alexander I's expectationsthe incorporation of both Wallachia and Moldaviabecause the threat of Napoleon's campaign against Russia forced him to transfer Mikhail Kutuzov, the brilliant commander of the war against the Turks, to the western front and to negotiate peace with the Sultan. The Sultan ceded part of the Romanian heartland, the Dnestr-Prut interfluve, since then known as Bessarabia. The Tsar granted the population of the new guberniia significant privileges and autonomy. Similar policies were applied in other "western" regions of the empire, such as Finland and Poland. Bessarabia, moreover, was supposed to constitute a showpiece for the Balkan peoples "under the Turkish yoke" of the advantages of Russian dominion.4 In contradiction to the dominant opinion in Romanian historiography, the tsarist regime did not initiate denationalizing and discriminatory nationality policies in Bessarabia before the middle of the nineteenth century. Basically, before the Crimean War, the concept of goal-oriented "nationality policies" was totally alien to the government in St. Petersburg. The immigration of Ukrainian and Russian peasants was partly spontaneous and partly an official measure to enhance the relatively low population density in rural Bessarabia. The cancelling of Bessarabia's privileges and autonomy in 1828 was part of Nicholas I's effort to centralize and to unify governmental structures. Meanwhile the Romanian national movement in Transylvania, Wallachia and the remaining parts of Moldavia had reached a new stage. In the seventeenth century, intellectuals in the three principalities had become aware of their common DacianRoman ancestry. In terms of contemporary nationbuilding theory, they constructed a myth of a common ethnogenesis and started to consolidate and propagate a national consciousness on this basis. A young generation of boiars ("landlords") returned from Paris full of new ideals: cultural revival, a national state and national independence. Although the revolution of 1848 failed in all three principalities, these ideals remained on the political agenda. In 1859 the advocates of national unification 40

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successfully accomplished the unification of Wallachia and Moldavia against the will of the Great Powers. The Tsar was not persuaded: when London and Paris accepted the new political constellation, St. Petersburg kept referring to the new Romanian state as "Moldo-Wallachia" in diplomatic correspondence.5 The Romanian nationbuilders removed Slavic elements from the lexicon and intentionally promoted Latin and French influences in standard Romanian. Moreover, in 1859 the Cyrillic script, which for centuries had been used to write the Romanian language, was officially replaced by the Latin script. In Bessarabia, however, the influence of the Russian language did not diminish, and the Cyrillic script was maintained. In Bessarabia only a small group of intellectuals was aware of the Romanian nationbuilding process. The backward and predominantly rural population between the Prut and Dnestr Rivers had only a local consciousness. They had no mature national identity, and they identified themselves as "Moldavians" only in a territorial, non-ethnic sense. According to some authors, the Russian government referred to the population of Bessarabia as "Romanians" until 1859, and as "Moldavians" after that, supposedly in an effort to separate the Bessarabians from their compatriots on the other side of the Prut, who called themselves "Moldavians" and "Wallachians" before 1859 and "Romanians" after the unification.6 From a purely functionalistic point of view this argument makes sense, but in the light of the historical realities of the nineteenth century it is rather questionable. First of all, indications for a national consciousness in Bessarabia before the beginning of the twentieth century are minimal, even among intellectuals. The Russian policy to restrict the use of the Romanian language in Bessarabian schools and to ban the publication or importation of books in the Romanian language and the Latin script in the second half of the century was part of the overall trend towards Russification and the beginning of a tsarist nationality policy as such rather than a specific grudge against the Bessarabian population. There is, moreover, no indication whatsoever that either the Romanian or the Russian government considered Bessarabia a real source of political conflict. Romanian intellectuals were well aware of the situation in Bessarabia. As the Romanian Foreign Minister Take Ionescu said in 1891: "From Transylvania we hear the lamentations from our brethren, but from Bessarabia we hear nothing any more."7 This silence was primarily due to a pronounced lack of national consciousness among the backward Moldavian peasants and not to tsarist repression. The addition "any more" indicates that Ionescu assumed that the natural, supra-historical Romanian national consciousness of the Bessarabians had been temporarily weakened by tsarist repression. Evidently, the tsarist regime itself did not think primarily in terms of national-ethnic loyalties and conflicts.8 The Russian government was aware of the Romanian-ness of its Bessarabian citizens, but it did not try consistently to influence the local nationbuilding process in another direction by designating them as "Moldavians." Some official documents and scholarly studies of the late nineteenth century refer to the Bessarabians 41

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as "Romanians," others as "Moldavians." Since the interwar period, Romanian nationalists have accumulated a list of Russian sources which (implicitly) "admitted" the Romanian-ness of the Moldavians.9 In the late nineteenth century even the Russifier Pavel Batiushkov failed to note any ethnic and historical differences between the Moldavians on the left bank of the Prut and the Romanians across the river.10 In 1891 a Russian encyclopedia devoted more pages to the "local laws of Bessarabia" than to the guberniia as such, indicating that centralization was more important than regional peculiarities and ethnic identities. It referred to the Bessarabians as "Moldavians" but added the alternative "Romanians" in brackets. The encyclopedia showed no anti-Romanian sentiments; it stated that together with the three Romanian principalities, Bessarabia belonged to the Roman province of Dacia, deriving its name from the Wallachian dynasty of the Basarabs who briefly occupied the area in the fourteenth century. Thereafter, Bessarabia became part of the Moldavian Principality. The encyclopedia mentioned the academic debate over whether the ancestors of the Moldavians (Romanians) were local Dacians or Roman colonists but failed to identify a Moldavian ancestry and history as distinct from the Romanian. Obviously, from the Russian point of view, territorial conquests were a natural process and needed no historical, ethnic or other justification.11 In sum, before the October Revolution the inhabitants of Bessarabia probably considered themselves "Moldavians" in a natural, primarily local-territorial sense. A politically constructed Moldavian national myth did not exist. Neither the tsarist administration nor Russian academic circles made a consistent effort to provide the Bessarabian population with a national identity, an ethnogenesis, or a national history of its own. The idea of such a strategy runs counter to the reality of nineteenth century Russia. At that time, nations were seen as supra-historical, immutable entities. The tsarist administration, moreover, was rather insensitive to issues of nationalism and interfered only superficially in the life of its subjects, focusing on taxation rather than nationbuilding.12

The National Movement, 1917-1918 In the Revolution of 1905, a Moldavian national movement appeared on the scene, initiated, organized and staffed by a handful of local intellectuals. After the suppression of the revolution, they managed to keep a small stream of Moldavian culture alive. In 1917, Bessarabia witnessed parallel movements for social and national liberation. Due to what would become known in Soviet historiography as "the conspiracy of the Romanian government, Moldavian bourgeois-nationalists, the Western capitalist powers, the Ukrainian Rada, the Bessarabian landowners, and the White generals," the nationalists got the upper hand. They dominated the Sfatul Jarii (National Council) and the net result of the revolution of 1917-1918 was the proclamation of unification with Romania on 9 April 1918. At the very beginning of 42

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1918, the Bolsheviks had challenged the dominant position of the Sfatul Tarii in Bessarabia and forced the Moldavian national leadership to ask for military support from the Romanian government, which was readily given. This "Marea Unire" or "Great National Unification" is still considered the climax of Romanian history. Inevitably, historians, and not only Romanian historians, have assumed a posteriori that the Moldavian leadership of the Sfatul Tarii had been striving for unification with the Romanian motherland all along. From their nationalist perspective, this was only natural. The assumption that national identity is a sociopolitical construction based on a particular selection of historical facts in a particular political constellation, rather than a supra-historical entity, leads to a different conclusion. Since 1812, Bessarabia had developed more or less isolated from Romania. By the end of the century, the small, indigenous, intellectual elite in this backward, agrarian, border region of the tsarist empire developed an interest in the culture, history and origins of the population. By the time of the First World War, they had not yet reached the second stage, the consolidation of a (Moldavian or Romanian) national identity underpinned by myths concerning the ethnogenesis, territory, language, culture and historical fate of their nation. The leaders of the Sfatul Jarii were typical representatives of the social groups identified in numerous (theoretical) studies as the nationbuilders par excellence: lawyers, teachers, professors, journalists and doctors.13 Evidently, by 1917, they were still far away from the third stagethe popularization of this constructed identity and its political instrumentalization. Therefore, in a way, the Revolution of 1917 (and the ensuing opportunities for national liberation) caught them unprepared. When the news of the Tsar's abdication reached Chiinau in March 1917, no mature national movement and ideology was available. Typically, the Moldavian National Party, the forerunner of the Sfatul Tarii, demanded only autonomy within a future Russian Federation and, in late 1917, a Moldavian Republic was proclaimed. The original membership list of the Sfatul Tarii indicates the nationality of the majority as "Moldavian," not Romanian. The political and military situation changed at a dizzying speed in those days. With German forces advancing into Romania and into Ukraine, wild gangs of Cossacks and bloodthirsty Bolsheviks crossing the Dnestr, and retreating and deserting Russian forces ransacking villages, independence was never a realistic option for the Sfatul Tarii leadership. Nevertheless, the idea of unification with Romania split the leadership. Both votes on conditional unification on 9 April 1918, and on the annulment of these conditions on 10 December 1918, were rather undemocratic. The local intellectuals were still in the middle of consolidating a regional identity into a full-blown national identity, be it Romanian or Moldavian. The political circumstances and outside interference forced the elite to opt for a Romanian identity, but left the masses unaffected: the nationalist Romanian politician and historian Nicolae Iorga dedicated one of his books to "those who will make the Moldavians aware of their [true] national identity!" 43

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The Bessarabian Communists and the Moldavian Republic The Moldavian myththat the Moldavian nation is distinct from the Romanian nation in terms of ethnogenesis, language, culture and historywas created by Soviet communists in the interwar period. Since the Second World War, politicians, propagandists and scholars in Chisjnau have presented several versions of the myth. The basic principle, however, remained the same. Soviet history-writing on Bessarabia prior to the Second World War consists of the historical publications from the Moldavian Autonomous Republic (1924-1940), pamphlets by communist exiles in the Soviet Union who had fled the Romanian occupation of Bessarabia and who had organized in the Obshchestvo Bessarabtsev (Association of Bessarabians, 1924-1938), and certain statements by Moscow propagandists and historians. The small number of books and articles devoted to Bessarabia in Moscow indicates the relative political unimportance and low priority of this subject. The lack of accepted historiographic traditions in this area meant that a communist interpretation had to be constructed. A number of Party magazines in Moscow and Kharkov carried articles on the October Revolution on the Romanian front in 1917-1918, which were obviously meant to arouse the revolutionary spirit of the workers in Bessarabia.14 Most of the brochures published in Moscow in the mid-1920s, written by Bessarabian communists affiliated with the Obshchestvo Bessarabtsev, were ferocious tirades against the Romanian conquest of Bessarabia and the "bloody oppression of the Bessarabian workers by the Romanian ruling class of bourgeoisie and landlords." The historical accounts they included were meager and often restricted to the October Revolution and the contemporary revolutionary fight of the Bessarabians. In 1925, Christian Rakovskii published his interpretation of the revolutionary history of Bessarabia in the brochure Romania and Bessarabia.15 The opinions of Rakovskii carried a great deal of weight as he had been a leading man in the Romanian Social-Democratic movement, one of the top people in the Comintern, and a leader in Soviet Ukraine; at this time he was the Soviet Ambassador to England. Rakovskii presented his own interpretation of Bessarabian history, beginning with the Moldavian ethnogenesis. His refutation of the Romanian national arguments was couched in a political-ideological language and was not based on scientific argumentation or historical documents; he was, as he said, a great believer in the will of the people, not in "the fabrications (izmyshleniia) of professors."16 Rakovskii used the word "Moldavians" without any ethnic connotation: the wandering of the peoples in the Dark Ages had made the Bessarabian population an "ethnographic mosaic," which accepted, for the sake of convenience, the Romanian language.17 The concept of the Moldavians as ethnically different from the Romanians was completely missing from his booklet. Rakovskii identified the Sfatul Tarii leaders primarily as "bourgeoisie" and not as Moldavians. In order to 44

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prove that the Sfatul Xarii's decisions did not represent the will of the population, he stressed the underrepresentation of peasants rather than the overrepresentation of Moldavians.18 Not only the Moldavian myth but also another (future) myth of Moldavian historiography was conspicuous by its absence. Rakovskii mentioned the resistance in Bessarabia against what he called "the Romanian annexation" but failed to mention the establishment of Soviet power in Bessarabia: on 14 January 1918, Bolshevik forces had occupied Chiinau and disbanded the Sfatul Xarii, to be chased out of town themselves by the Romanian army a few days later. This is remarkable, as Rakovskii had been a leading Bolshevik in Odessa in those days and an eyewitness to these events. Perhaps the Bolsheviks had failed to notice their official assumption of power in Chisinau at that time! Shortly after the publication of his booklet, Christian Rakovskii shared the political fate of Trotsky. His. name and his booklet on Bessarabia became taboo in Soviet historiography.19 His failure to recognize the Moldavians as an independent nation also meant that his work would quickly become obsolete. The Bessarabian exiles in Moscow wrote their brochures to stir up political turmoil and to create an alternative historical tradition for the Bessarabian people. These pamphlets were phrased in communist political jargon as was Rakovskii's. The authors, most of them members of the Obshchestvo Bessarabtsev, were dogmatic communists to whom national concepts such as the Moldavian nation and language were insignificant and "alien." For them, the class struggle was sufficient reason to shatter the claim of the Romanian ruling class to Bessarabia. They stressed the Romanian oppression in Bessarabia, economic stagnation, the treachery of the Sfatul X^rii, and the revolutionary activities they claimed were taking place in Bessarabia.20 The creation of this revolutionary tradition was meant to instill a sense of pride and identity in the population of Bessarabia. Articles in Krasnaia Bessarabiia (Red Bessarabia), the journal of the Obshchestvo Bessarabtsev, were also written in the ideological terms of class struggle and intended to remind the reading public of the heroism associated with the revolutionary struggle. The cover of this magazine depicted Bessarabia as a woman in chains, chained to Romania. The pages were filled with stories venerating the heroes of 1917-1918 and with descriptions of the communist underground movement in the interwar years. These writers had no qualms admitting that most of the fighters were non-Moldavians and not even born in Bessarabia. After the Second World War, however, Soviet historians would go to great lengths to prove the indigenous roots of the Bessarabian revolutionary movement and the Moldavian participation in this movement.21 In all the publications and meetings of the Obshchestvo Bessarabtsev, the contemporary situation and recent history of Bessarabia predominated. Less than 2% of all Soviet books and articles on Moldavian history published before 1940 dealt with pre-1917 history.22 The lack of trained historians, published sources, and institutions also contributed to this situation. 45

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Even when the Moldavian myth became part of the official doctrine at the end of the 1920s, the Obshchestvo Bessarabtsev stuck to its original communist argumentation and jargon.23 When the Moldavian Autonomous Republic was founded on the left bank of the Dnestr in 1924, local historical institutions and publications followed gradually. In 1928, a Moldavian Scientific Committee was set up for "the study of the territory and culture of the Moldavian people."24 In the field of history, the most important members were Samuil Lekhttsir and Naum Nartsov. Lekhttsir collected an enormous amount of source material on the history of the left bank. Nartsov promised a multi-volume history of Transnistria, but by 1940 a historical synthesis had yet to be published in Tiraspol.25 Like all Soviet historiography of the 1920s, the publications from the Moldavian Autonomous Republic were dominated by communist ideology and revolutionary themes. The lion's share of the publications consisted of memoirs from revolutionary heroes and eyewitnesses to the events of 1917 and 1918.26 In the next decade, Nartsov and other propagandists published a number of articles in Ail-Union Party journals such as Bor'ba Klassov {Class Struggle) and Istorik Marksist {Marxist Historian). For lack of Party dogmas and other examples to guide them, the historians felt insecure dealing with pre-revolutionary history. As a result, the few brief excursions into this area were extremely confused, often contradictory, and lacking in references to historical facts or sources. In Tiraspol in 1933 The Romanian Intervention in Bessarabia was published. It is primarily a compilation of memoirs and older articles on the events of 1917-1918, but it also contains a rare (though brief) survey of pre-revolutionary history.27 The preconceived aim of this historical excursion was to show the falsity of the Romanian historical claims to Bessarabia. In view of later developments, the arguments are almost endearing, although they are clearly inaccurate. The Bessarabian question first arose in 1856 when the European powers decided to hand Bessarabia over to the Moldavian Principality. After the Second World War, no Soviet historian would mark 1856 as the beginning of the Bessarabian question. For them it started in 1918 when "bourgeois-landlord Romania forcefully incorporated Bessarabia with the help of the treacherous Sfatul Jarii." The idea of a Moldavian national identity is still completely absent in the 1933 book. The authors mentioned that in the interwar years, the Ukrainian, Russian, and Bulgarian minorities were exploited and repressed by the Romanian regime. But, the authors said not one word on the national repression of the Moldavians by the Romanian regime. Similarly, the behavior of Sfatul Jarii members who conspired with Bucharest to achieve unification was explained as a "bourgeois-landlord intrigue" and not as national betrayal by these Moldavians.28 Looking back at this consistently communist interpretation of history without "Moldavian nationalism" in the interwar period, the question arises what impact was had by the creation of the Moldavian Autonomous Republic on the left bank in 1924. Prior to 1924 the idea of a Moldavian Republic had not been considered by the 46

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Bolsheviks. The slogans used in Soviet diplomatic protests against the Romanian annexation and in local uprisings in Bessarabia (in 1919 and 1924) spoke of "workers and peasants" and demanded a Bessarabian Soviet Republic. By 1924 the Kremlin leaders gave up the idea that a world revolution would occur and that Bessarabia would be reconquered. In October 1924, the Party arbitrarily turned some Moldavian-inhabited parts of Ukraine into an Autonomous Republic within the Ukrainian SSR. The original idea had been of a Moldavian Union Republic, but the Ukrainian leadership wanted only to create some autonomous raions and oblasts for the Moldavians. However, even this compromisethe creation of an autonomous republicimplied the existence of a Moldavian titular nationality. In contrast to the tsarist regime, the communist regime was determined to interfere in the life of its subjects on every level. On ideological grounds, the communist leaders were convinced of the possibility and the necessity to create a new socialist man and to construct (national) identities. The dynamics of Ail-Union politics in the 1920s produced a Moldavian national identity. As argued by Charles King in this volume, a Moldavian language was constructed to communicate the communist message to the common people, and, in line with the indigenization campaign to promote local cadres, a Moldavian nation was created.29 Despite the rise of Russian nationalism and Soviet patriotism in the 1930s, orthodox communism remained the dominant part of ideology before the Second World War. Only those elements of a Moldavian identity that served the cause of communism were pursued with vigor. In 1925 a Comintern commission introduced the concept of a Moldavian nation as official dogma.30 Consequently, the very same obedient, Romanian communists who in 1924 voiced their support for "the struggle of the Bessarabian workers" condemned "the suppression of the Moldavian nation" at their next congress in 1928.31 The conflict, however, was not Moldavians versus Romanians, but the Moldavian people versus the Romanian bourgeois state. No effort was made to construct a Moldavian ethnogenesis or a Moldavian history. Moldavian culture and language were characterized as "proletarian" and were contrasted to the Romanian "bourgeois" culture and its language with its decadent, artificial French and Latin influences. In sum, until 1940, national arguments of legitimacy took second place to the original communist ideology. The Impossible Ultimatum of 26 June 1940 On 26 June 1940, Stalin activated the secret protocols of the 1939 MolotovRibbentrop Pact and sent the Romanian government an ultimatum, demanding the immediate cession of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to Moscow. The text of the ultimatum exemplified the Kremlin's lack of interest in, and knowledge of, the history, culture, and demography of Bessarabia. "In 1918, Romania took advantage of the military weakness of Russia and forcibly robbed the Soviet Union (Russia) of part of its territorynamely, Bessarabia, and 47

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thus broke the century-old unity of Bessarabia, inhabited principally by Ukrainians, with the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. The Soviet Union, never reconciled to this robbery, considers it as necessary and timely, in the interest of re-establishing justice, to take up jointly with Romania the settlement of the return of Bessarabia to the Soviet Union."32 After the war, most Soviet historians chose to ignore this preamble with the bizarre argument that Ukrainians comprised a majority in Bessarabia.33 Obviously, the assertion in the preamble was incompatible with the myth of the unique Moldavian language and nation. The ultimatum, like all previous political and historical writings, failed to mention one of the main subsequent arguments for the return of Bessarabia: the (re)unification of the Moldavian people. The contention that the majority of the Bessarabian population was Ukrainian and that this area should, therefore, be part of the Ukrainian Soviet Republicno matter how falsewas, nevertheless, an argument in terms of nation and ethnicity, rather than class and internationalism.34 Immediately after the ultimatum, the Kremlin ordered Soviet historians to prepare a Soviet view on the history of the recently acquired territories as a justification for the annexation. Tentative views were prepared by Bessarabian exiles and communist propagandists from Moscow. Both groups were hard pressed to make their writings comply with both the historical facts and the ultimatum (not necessarily in this order). Two examples are an article by Naum Nartsov for Istorik Marksist and the official brochure Soviet Bessarabia and Soviet Bukovina; both testify to the unsatisfactory and shaky solutions the historians and agitators invented under pressure.35 The brochure, based on the text of the ultimatum and some vague notions about the history of Bessarabia, was obviously put together in a hurry. The justification for the Soviet ultimatum was implicitly based on two arguments. The first argument is familiar: the forceful Romanian annexation of 1918. The second argument is new: Bessarabia is claimed to be original Russian territory because Generals Suvorov and Kutuzov decided to incorporate it into the Empire around 1800 to protect the people from assaults by foreign conquerors. This argument intimated the beginnings of the re-evaluation of the annexation of 1812. The term "foreign conquerors," from which the Russians were carefully exempted, also intimated the instigation of the friendship of peoples myth. The gradual pro-Russian re-orientation, the shift to national rather than communist language, and the incorporation of the myths in Soviet historiography were tentative and subtle rather than outspoken, which makes it unlikely that they occurred on direct Party orders. While the indications of Russian nationalism were very meager, mention of Moldavian nationalism and the Moldavian myth were completely absent from the official brochure: "For twenty-two years the Dnestr separated the people of Bessarabia from ..." After the war, a historian of the Moldavian Republic would have finished without hesitation: "... from their ethnic kin on the left bank." The quo48

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tation, however, continues: "... from a different world, the great Soviet Union, the workers of Soviet Moldavia."36 In order to underpin the ultimatum's argument of the Ukrainian majority in Bessarabia, the authors observed that "in 1897, Russians, Ukrainians, and Moldavians together accounted for 76% of the population of Bessarabia." This figure was given without further specifying that almost half of the population consisted of Moldavians in that census!37 Propagation of a Moldavian identity based on a Moldavian majority in their own state after the Second World War contradicted the claim of a Ukrainian majority in the ultimatum, which was therefore ignored in later publications. These trends can also be observed when the Romanian "violent annexation" of 1918 and the "regime of terror" were discussed immediately after the annexation in 1940. The contrast between the left banka "workers' paradise" of five-year plans, economic growth and cultural advancementand Bessarabia, where the landlords and the gendarmes ruled once again, was emphasized. According to communist jargon, the Romanian annexation in 1918 had meant a continuation of tsarist oppression. The word "national yoke" was, however, not used in connection with the Romanian rule in Bessarabia, which implied that the Moldavian myth was not yet considered. In 1940, shortly after the annexation, Nartsov showed that he had not wasted his time in Tiraspol when he published an article dealing at length with prerevolutionary historyquoting Byzantine and Russian chronicles, tsarist publications, and documents from the Odessa municipal archives. His goal was to present an original, scholarly Soviet interpretation, rather than a defensive, politicized reaction to the Romanian point of view. Nartsov tried to prove that the indigenous population of Bessarabia and Transnistria consisted mainly of Slavs: according to him, the first Romanized colonists came to Moldavia from Transylvania in the fourteenth century and found the territory inhabited by a Slavic population. Nartsov then noted, in line with the ultimatum, that at the end of the nineteenth century the Slavs, Ukrainians, and Ruthenians comprised the majority in most of the Bessarabian districts. By stressing the Slavic influence, Nartsov brushed aside the concept of the Moldavian nation and pointed out that most of the Moldavians were "assimilated Ukrainians." His vague but telling assertion that "the Slavic language played a decisive part in the creation of the Moldavian language" pointed in the same direction. The concept of the Moldavian nation was irrelevant in Nartsov's mixture of class struggle and Russian nationalism. From Nartsov's point of view, the Bessarabian people were reunited in 1940 with the related (rodstvennye) peoples of the Soviet Union and not with "their Moldavian brothers" on the left bank.38 Nartsov concluded his article with a detailed but nevertheless traditional narration of the events of 1917-1918. With the support of the English and French imperialists and using the Sfatul Tarii as a cover, the Romanian oligarchy prevented the completion of the revolutionary process and snatched Bessarabia away from Soviet 49

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Russia. Despite his thorough knowledge of Bessarabian history, Nartsov, like Rakovskii, appeared to be unaware of what was later to become a crucial dogma in Soviet historiography: Soviet power had been briefly established in Bessarabia on 14 January 1918! He described the struggle against Romanian conquest and occupation as a struggle of peasants and workers against bourgeois nationalists without any national aspect.

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The Moldavian Myth Completed During the years 19451985, the Moldavian myth predominated in the Moldavian Soviet Republic. The full-blown myth consisted of four parts: an independent Moldavian language, an independent Moldavian nation, an independent Moldavian state, and an independent Moldavian culture. The linchpin of the myth was, of course, the Moldavian nation. In Soviet theory each of the five Marxist socioeconomic formations was related to a stage in the development of the ethnos: the original tribes became nationalities under feudalism. In the capitalist period the nationalities became bourgeois nations, and under socialism they conveniently turned into socialist nations. This historical periodization hypothetically allows for three basically different concepts of a Moldavian nation, depending on the assumed historical moment of its ethnogenesis: The Romanian-Moldavian split might be found in the feudal or in the capitalist period (or in the socialist era, as argued in the interwar years). In the 1950s, at the height of the Stalinist glorification of the Slavic and Russian role in history, the first communist textbook on Moldavian history presented the appropriate view of the Moldavian ethnogenesis: in the Dark Ages, the Romanized Dacians living in the Dnestr-Danube-Carpathian region merged with the indigenous Slavic population. The union of the Dacians and the Southern Slavs resulted in the Romanian (or Wallachian) ethnogenesis. The union of the Dacians and the Eastern Slavs resulted in the Moldavian ethnogenesis.39 This early split implied a considerable difference between both nations and their languages. For the same reasons, some Moscow linguists seriously claimed that the Moldavian language was a Slavic language or was about to develop from a Roman into a Slavic language. In December 1951, linguists from Moscow and their colleagues from the Moldavian Republic gathered in Chiinau to discuss the implications of Stalin's remarks on linguistics for the Moldavian language.40 The Moscow linguists rejected the assumption that the Moldavian language had a Slavic character as an absurdity and a scholarly disgrace. Even the assertion of linguistic independence was toned down, and the affinity between Romanian and Moldavian was now recognized. In fact, the reference of Soviet linguists to the two "East-Romance languages" represented a compromise between assertion of independence and complete identity of Moldavian and Romanian.41 50

CARVING A MOLDAVIAN IDENTITY OUT-OF HISTORY

The conference of 1951 marked the beginning of a liberal phase in Moldavian language policy. The Moldavian language was allowed to assimilate towards the literary Romanian language, while Russification was toned down.42 The Cyrillic script was maintained, but the Ukrainian and Russian influence on lexicon and grammar subsided. Thereafter, the vulnerable myth of an independent Moldavian language was maintained with great care. Linguists presented new research to prove the existence of an independent Moldavian language again and again.43 In 1976, Party Secretary Ivan Bodiul even had an interpreter in conversations with the Romanian leader Ceaujescu. Parallel to the concept of Moldavian as an independent language related to Romanian, the view on Moldavian ethnogenesis also changed. The final MoldavianRomanian separation had occurred neither in the Dark Ages under Slavic influence nor in the 1920s under the influence of socialist construction but, rather, in the nineteenth century under the influence of capitalism. Overall, the previously overbearing Slavic and Russian role in Moldavian ethnogenesis and history was toned down in the 1960s. The cultural issue was the least important and, therefore, the last cornerstone of the myth to be constructed. The concept of a gradual consolidation of separate Moldavian and Romanian bourgeois nations since 1812 caused many problems and confusion for the field of cultural studies. The assumption that the Moldavian ethnogenesis occurred in the nineteenth century, under the influence of capitalism, allowed Chiinau to "nationalize" cultural (and political) figures from the preceding centuries of feudalism. Prior to 1812, the (whole) Moldavian Principality was simply recognized as the state of the Moldavians and the motherland of their cultural leaders. A prominent political and cultural figure like Dimitrie Cantemir, a Moldavian ruler from the eighteenth century, who was important to the Balkan Enlightenment, had shown only shimmers of a national consciousness and had not been involved in political activities that might have "incriminated" him as a Romanian "bourgeois nationalist." The rehabilitation of nineteenth-century literary figures started in the early 1950s in order to create a suitable cultural heritage for the Moldavian Republic. The earlier condemnation of the classics was now labeled "nihilism." In the first half century after the 1812 annexation, Bessarabia had not produced any writers of significance, and in the second half, cultural and national oppression in Bessarabia prompted writers and poets born in Bessarabia to leave for either Moscow or Bucharest.44 The rigid communist dogma prescribed that the building of a Moldavian bourgeois nation started in 1812 and that the Bolsheviks found a full-grown Moldavian bourgeois nation in 1917. All the rest was a matter of taste: those interested in political history preferred an early date for the completion of the nationbuilding process and the final separation of the Romanian and Moldavian identities, usually "the second half of the nineteenth century" or 1859, the year of the Romanian unification. This logical but dogmatic definition implied that Mihail Eminescu and several other major literary 51

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figures who worked and lived on the right bank of the Prut in the late nineteenth century could not be incorporated into the Moldavian heritage. An earlier date implied a longer existence of the Moldavian nation prior to 1917 and a stronger Moldavian claim of state legitimacy. Those interested in cultural studies, however, gave preference to a later date, at the very end of the century. Such a periodization allowed the inclusion of more nineteenth century writers and poets in the Moldavian national cultural heritage. Neither interpretation was, however, strictly applied in practice. The classification of Moldavian literary figures in the second edition of the Greater Soviet Encyclopedia (1948-1960) was typically inconsistent. In principle, late nineteenth-century classics from the right bank of the Prut belonged to both Moldavian and Romanian heritage, while those from the left bank belonged to Moldavian literature only. The encyclopedia, however, listed some as Moldavian, others as Moldavian and Romanian, and Eminescu as only Romanian.45 More recent encyclopedias have listed all of the nineteenth-century classics as both Moldavian and Romanian.

The Twilight of the Moldavian Myth The Gorbachev era marked the end of Moldavian communist historiography. Glasnost and the communist interpretations of Moldavian history proved incompatible. Within a few years, the four crucial pillars of the myth were eliminated, and the edifice collapsed like a house of cards. The first concept to come under attack was the Moldavian language, which became a pivotal issue for the growing national and pro-perestroika movements in the Moldavian Republic. For the nationalists, the national languagebe it Romanian or Moldavianwas the main instrument for national revival, and for the reformers it was an effective instrument to dispute the conservative Russian (or Russified) nomenclature's claim to power.46 In 1988-1989, the political leadership in Chiinau reluctantly recognized the Moldavian language as the state language of the republic and allowed the use of the Latin script.47 These concessions de facto boiled down to acknowledging that the Moldavian and Romanian languages were, in fact, identical. As a consequence, the idea of an independent Moldavian nation became untenable as well. The idea of a Moldavian nation with its own language was discredited, and the Romanian interpretation of Moldavian history became dominant. Evidently, the third pillar, the idea of an authentic Moldavian culture, could not be upheld either. The fourth pillar, Moldavian statehood, however, never lost its political reality. Although its borders had changed significantly more than once, Moldavia had been an independent (or autonomous) national state separate from Romania for almost two centuries. Consequently, the debate among historians on the origins and founding year of the Moldavian Soviet state continued even in the late 1980s as this state seemed on the verge of disintegration.48 52

CARVING A MOLDAVIAN IDENTITY OUT OF HISTORY

Reconstructing the Moldavian Identity Soon after independence the Popular Front started to lose its mass support, most of all because it pressed for immediate unification with Romania. Most Moldavians, however, learned to appreciate independence and realistically weigh the cultural advantages of unification and its political and economic disadvantages.49 The champions of unification could fall back on the traditional Romanian nationalist and national-communist interpretations of Bessarabian history.50 The proponents of independence, however, confront a much more difficult task. Although they "objectively" acknowledged the Romanian-ness of the Moldavian language, they needed a Moldavian national identity in order to legitimize Moldavian independent statehood in the face of Transnistnan separatism and the rival concept of unification with Romania (not unlike their communist predecessors). In Moldavia, national independence had preceded the construction of national state ideology. While composing a new interpretation of Moldavian history intended to foster Moldavian consciousness and patriotic pride, the new regime must confront the older communist "scarecrows" in this field. As predicted two years ago: "Moldavian communist historiography may be dead, but the communist views on Moldavian history will be part of the discursive field forever."51 The turnover of staff in historical science made the (re)construction of a Moldavian identity and a national interpretation of history more difficult: the heavyweights of communist historiography had discredited themselves with decades of dogmatic communist and Russian nationalist publications. By the mid-1990s most of them had died or left for Tiraspol. Since the late 1980s, their positions had been taken by younger Moldavian historians with pro-Romanian inclinations, who came to dominate the academic institutions and publishing. This left the regime virtually without academic support for the construction of a consistent new national myth. Therefore, the president, Mircea Snegur, shouldered this task himself in a pioneering speech on 5 February 1994.52 Snegur's speech was a shrewd mixture of old and new arguments. He depicted Moldavian independence as the will of the people and the Moldavian Republic as a fatherland for all its inhabitants. The separatist movement in Tiraspol he brushed aside as "imperial revanchism," but took his time to distinguish his views from those of the Romanian nationalists in Chisinau and Bucharest. His main historical line of argument was the "centuries-old state tradition of Moldavia," beginning with the Moldavian Principality of the fourteenth century. Unlike previous Soviet historians he could also include in this tradition the Moldavian Republic created by the Sfatul Tarii in December 1917. He noted the common Roman ancestry of Romanians and Moldavians. Like Soviet historians had done before, he quoted medieval sources, referring to the inhabitants of the Principality as "Moldavians." Similarly, he admitted that Romanian and Moldavian were in essence one and the same language, but he also indicated (unspecified) peculiarities of the Moldavian tongue. Overall, he 53

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avoided the issue of the Romanian-ness of the Moldavian nation and language and highlighted the pride and traditions of the Moldavians as well as their past and present statehood. He criticized the opportunistic attitude of the republican historians: having championed the concept of the Slavic roots of the Moldavian nation for decades, they, all of a sudden, had become ardent defendants of its Romanian-ness. Moreover, they disregarded their task to "proclaim the history of the Moldavian land and its inhabitants" to the people. Unlike their president, the historians had obviously missed

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the signs of the times. Snegur himself was aware that nations do not grow; they have to be created. In his speech he explicitly deplored, that "historical realities do not create nations" but seemed convinced that he might lend a helping hand.

NOTES 1. Adapted from the title: Gh. I. Brtianu, Ein Rtsel und ein Wunder der Geschichte: Das rumnische Volk (A Mystery and a Miracle in History: The Romanian People) 1927 (rpt. Munich: Rumnische Studiengruppe, 1968). 2. Cited in: K. Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism. Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceauescu's Romania (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 302. 3. A. I. Boldur, La bessarabie et Ies relations russo-roumaines. (La question bessarabienne et le droit international) (Bessarabia and Russian-Romanian Relations. [The Bessarabian Question and International Law]) (Paris: Librairie Universitaire, 1927; rpt. Munich: Verlag Rumnische Studien, 1973), pp. 48-57. 4. G. F. Jewsbury, The Russian Annexation of Bessarabia: 1774-1828. A Study of Imperial Expansion (Boulder: East European Quarterly, 1976). 5. B. Jelavich, Russia and the Romanian National Cause 1858-1859 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, n.d.), pp. 103-120. 6. W. Feldman, "The Theoretical Basis for the Definition of the Moldavian Nationality," in R. S. Clem, ed., The Soviet West. Interplay between Nationality and Social Organization (New York: Preager Publishers, 1975), pp. 46-59. 7. T. Ionescu, La Politique trangre de la Roumanie (Romanian Foreign Policy) (Bucharest: 1891) cited in: Wim P. van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question in Communist Historiography. Nationalist and Communist Poitics and History-Writing (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1994), p. 53, note 51. 8. M. Raeff, "Patterns of Russian Imperial Policy towards the Nationalities," in E. Allworth, ed., Soviet Nationality Problems (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), pp. 22-42. 9. See, for instance: N. Titulescu, 'Two Neighbours of Russia and Their Policies I. Roumania and Bessarabia," The Nineteenth Century and After (1924), pp. 791-803. 10. Wim P. van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question, p. 154. 11. Entsiklopedicheskii slovar, 1st edn (St. Petersburg: Tipo-Litografiya I. A. Efrona, 1891), Vol. VI, pp. 604-614. 12. Raeff, "Patterns of Russian Imperial Policy," pp. 22-42. 13. See the charts based on the original membership list of the Sfatul Trii in my dissertation: Wim P. van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question, pp. 378-379; I. Livezeanu, "Moldavia, 1917-1990: Nationalism and Internationalism Then and Now," Armenian Review, Vol. 43, Nos 2-3, 1990, pp. 153-193.

CARVING A MOLDAVIAN IDENTITY OUT OF HISTORY 14. See: P. M. Kozhuchar and I. I. Shpak, eds, Istoriia, arkheologiia, tnografiia Moldavii. Ukazatel' sovetskoi literatury 1918-1968 gg. (Kishinev: Kartia Moldoveniask, 1973), Vol. I, Nos 1343-1346. 15. Ch. Rakovskii, Rumyniia i Bessarabiia. K semiletiiu anneksii Bessarabii (Moscow: Izdanie Litizdata, 1925). 16. Rakovskii, Rumyniia i Bessarabiia, pp. 9-19. 17. In 1925, other authors also stressed the jumbled origins of the population of Bessarabia. See: N. S. Dostian, "Dunaiskie kniazhestva v russkoi publitsistike kontsa XVIII i nachale XIX veka," Revue Roumaine d'Histoire, Vol. 20, No. 1, 1981, pp. 31-41. 18. Rakovskii, Rumyniia i Bessarabiia, pp. 34-41, 52-55. 19. Rakovskii's book is not listed in: Istoriia, arkheologiia, tnografiia Moldavii, Vol. I. 20. See, for instance, L. N. Aleksandri, Bessarabiia i bessarabskii vopros (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo, 1924). 21. M. Bruchis, Rossiia, Rumyniia i Bessarabiia (1812-1918-1924-1940) (Jerusalem: Graph Press, 1979), pp. 156-189. 22. Istoriia, arkheologiia, tnografiia Moldavii, Vol. I; Wim P. van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question, p. 375. 23. Ia M. Kopanskii, Obshchestvo Bessarabtsev v SSSR i Soiuzy Bessarabskikh migrantov (1924-1940) (Kishinev: Shtiinca, 1978), pp. 96-102. 24. O. Iu. Tarasov, "Iz istorii organizacii pervykh nauchnykh tsentrov v sovetskoi Moldavii," in I. K. Vartichan, A. M. Lazarev, T. I. Malinovskii, et al., eds, XXV s" ezd KPSS i problemy razvitiia nauki (Kishinev: Shtiinca, 1977), pp. 20-30. 25. V. S. Kiriiak, "Lekhttsir, Samuil Ruvimovich," Sovetskaia Moldaviia. Kratkaia ntsiklopediia (Kishinev: Kartia Moldoveniask, 1981), p. 344; "Nartsov, Naum Arianovich," Sovetskaia Moldaviia. Kratkaia ntsiklopediia, p. 425; Tarasov, "Iz istorii organizatsii," pp. 20-30; N. P. Smochina, Republica Moldoveneasca a Sovietilor (The Moldavian Soviet Republic) (Bucharest: Cartea Romaneasca, 1938), pp. 21-25. 26. See, for instance, Istoriia, arkheologiia, tnografiia Moldavii, Vol. I, Nos 1343-1364, 1783-1794. 27. E. Bagrov, ed., Interventia rotnina in Basarabia. Culegeri de materiale si documente (1917-1918) (The Romanian Intervention in Bessarabia. A Collection of Materials and Documents) (Tiraspol: Editura de Stat a Moldovei, 1933), Vol. I. 28. Interventia romina in Basarabia, Vol. I, pp. 14-20. 29. See also: C. King, The Politics of Language in Moldova, 1924-1994 (Diss. Oxford University, 1995), pp. 69-140. 30. M. Bruchis, Nations-Nationalities-People: A Study of the Nationalities Policy of the Communist Party in Soviet Moldavia (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1984), p. 167. Further research in the archives of the Comintern is necessary for an evaluation of the role of this commission in the construction of a Moldavian identity. 31. R. R. King, A History of the Romanian Communist Party (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1980), pp. 14-18. 32. J. Degras, ed., Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), Vol. m , pp. 458-459. 33. A. M. Lazarev, Moldavskaia sovetskaia gosudarstvennost' i bessarabskii vopros (Kishinev: Kartia Moldoveniask, 1974), pp. 26-31, 121, 126. 34. Dokumenty vneshnei politiki SSSR (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1958-1959), Vol. II, p. 153; Vol. IV, pp. 483-488. 35. N. Nartsov, "Istoricheskie sud'by Bessarabii i Moldavii. (Kratkii ocherk)," Istorik Marksist, Vol. 9, 1940, pp. 85-98; Sovetskaia Bessarabiia i sovetskaia Bukovina (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo Politicheskoi Literatury, 1940).

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W. VAN MEURS 36. N. Nartsov, Sovetskaia Bessarabiia i sovetskaia Bukovina, p. 14. 37. In the section on Bukovina, however, the Ukrainian majority in northern Bukovina and the national oppression by the Romania government are mentioned explicitly. Sovetskaia Bessarabiia i sovetskaia Bukovina, pp. 15-26. 38. N. Nartsov, "Istoricheskie sud'by," pp. 87-90, 98. The use of the plural "peoples" and the term "Bessarabian people" instead of "Moldavian people" shows the intended connotation to be based on class rather than nation. 39. A. D. Udal'tsov and L. V. Cherepnin, eds, Kurs istorii Moldavii, Vol. I (Kishinev: Shkoala Sovetik, 1949), pp. 35-46. 40. A. Kleess, "Rumnisch und Moldauisch" (Romanian and Moldavian), Osteuropa, Vol. 5, No. 4, 1955, pp. 281-284. 41. M. Bruchis, One Step Back, Two Steps Forward: On the Language Policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the National Republics (Moldavian: A Look Back, a Survey, and Perspectives, 1924-1980) (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1982), pp. 97-116; E. Lozovan, "La Linguistique roumaine de 1952 1954" (Romanian Linguistics from 1952 until 1954), Zeitschrift fr Romanische Philologie, Vols 71, Nos 5-6, 1955, pp. 391-407. 42. N. Dima, "Moldavians or Romanians?" in R. S. Clem, ed., The Soviet West. Interplay between Nationality and Social Organization (New York: Preager Publishers, 1975), pp. 31-45. 43. N. Timiras, "The Idiom of Bessarabia and Its Latinity and Identity with the Romanian Language," in M. Manoliu-Manea, ed., The Tragic Plight of a Border Area: Bassarabia and Bucovina (Los Angeles: Humboldt State University Press, 1983), pp. 143-166. 44. K. Heitmann, "Rumnische Sprache und Literatur in Bessarabien und Transnistrien. (Die sogenannte moldauische Sprache und Literatur)" (Romanian Language and Literature in Bessarabia and Transnistria. [The So-called Moldavian Language and Literature]), Zeitschrift fr Romanische Philologie, Vol. 81, Nos 1-2, 1965, pp. 102-156; Kleess, "Rumnisch und Moldauisch," pp. 281-284. 45. Lazarev, Moldavskaia sovetskaia gosudarstvennost', pp. 526-537. 46. W. Crowther, "The Politics of Ethno-National Mobilization: Nationalism and Reform in Soviet Moldavia," Russian Review, Vol. 50, No. 2, 1991, pp. 183-202. 47. "O statuse gosudarstvennogo iazyka Moldavksoi SSR," Kommunist Moldavii, Vol. 10, 1989, pp. 6-15; V. Socor, "Moldavian Proclaimed Official Language in the Moldavian SSR," Radio Liberty-Report on the USSR, Vol. 1, No. 38, 1989, pp. 13-15. 48. Wim P. van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question, pp. 204, 269-273; ch. 6 in: Wim P. van Meurs, Die Gestrigen heute. Reflexionen der russischen Diaspora in Lettland und Moldova ber ihre Geschichte und Identitt, 1985-1994 (Yesterday's Men. Reflections of the Russian Diaspora in Latvia and Moldova on Its History and Identity, 1985-1994) [forthcoming]. 49. V. Socor, "Why Moldova Does Not Seek Reunification," Radio Free Europe/Radio LibertyResearch Report, Vol. 1, No. 5, 1992, pp. 27-33. 50. Actually, up until early 1994, post-communist Moldavian historiography was dominated by reprints of the works of pre-war Romanian historians. 51. Wim P. van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question, p. 204. 52. M. Snegur, "Respublika Moldovastrana vsekh ee grazhdan," Nezavisimaia Moldova, 10 February 1994, pp. 1-2. See also: P. P. Moldovan, Moldovenii n istorie (Chiinu: Polygraf-Service, 1994); Z. Ornea, "O carte ticloas," Romnia Literar, No. 21, 1994, p. 9.

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