On 06/12/05, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) rowikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
Moldovan ethnicity separate of Romanian) will tell you that "Moldovans wanted self-determination from Romania, they were never forced by the 'liberating' Soviet Union". Well, that's just propaganda.
One thing I've heard from Romanians is that all Moldovenists are actually Russians. That's certainly not true. The Moldovenist movement is a movement with some support in the intellectual community but admittedly only a minority, currently the trend in the Moldovan intellectual community is to favour closer cultural ties with Romania in a romanticist sort of way (referring to Romanians as "our brothers", and saying that union with Romania "is our destiny", and other things like that), but certainly the Moldovenist movement has its supporters in academia.
And most Moldovenists are not Russian or Ukrainian. While Russo-Moldovans and, to a lesser extent, Ukraino-Moldovans do seem to believe in the concept of a separate Moldovan identity from Romania at a much higher rate than do Moldovans, it's undeniable that some of the most fervent supporters of the Moldovenist ideas are infact ethnically Moldovan (don't call them Romanian because that will make them mad).
The most hysterically extreme Moldovenist publication in the linguistic arena in the last few years is undeniably Vasile Stati's "Dictsionar Moldovenesc-Romynesc". And he speaks in the preface about "our Moldovan language" because it is, in fact, his native language.
But the vast majority of supporters of the Moldovenist hypotheses are actually rural peasants, from what I heard. Even though their speech is much closer to Romanians than the speech of cities, the country bumpkins are apparently convinced that they are Moldovans and their language, Moldovan.
And sure, it was impossible to support the theory of Moldovan and Romanian ethnic unity until glasnost and perestroica.
Moldovenists might feel in the historical perspective that they were liberated from Romania, but Moldovans who disagree with the Moldovenist perspsective will tell you the opposite usually. So who is right? I think it depends. Not everybody was happy when Bessarabia united with Romania despite what some people will tell you -- there really were those people who at the time supported continued independence -- and it's conceivable that they were happy when their nation was annexed back to Russia. But the people who were happy at uniting with Romania certainly felt the opposite.
Mark
-- "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin