On 06/12/05, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <rowikipedia(a)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