Moldova

The history of Moldova is complicated by the fact that the republic's present-day territory was not called Moldova or Moldavia until 1940. Present-day Moldova occupies the central two-thirds of a region historically referred to as Bessarabiya. For centuries the name Moldova referred to a larger area encompassing Bessarabiya and stretching from the Black Sea in the south to Bukovina, a former province of Romania, in the north, and from the Siret River in the west to the Dniester in the east. Established in the 15th century, Moldova has a long history of foreign domination. It fell under Turkish suzerainty in the 16th century, and part of the north was added to the Austrian Empire in the 18th century. From 1812 to 1856 Russians occupied the eastern portion of Moldova, which they named Bessarabiya. After Bessarabiya was returned to Moldova in 1856, Moldova and the region of Walachia were united to form the Kingdom of Romania in 1859. The territorial integrity of the new Romanian state did not last long, however. In 1878 Russian forces reannexed Bessarabiya, which remained part of the Russian Empire until 1917. In March 1918 the Bessarabiyan legislature voted in favor of unification with Romania, and at the Paris Peace Conference in 1920 the union was officially recognized by the United States, France, Great Britain, and other western countries. The new Soviet government did not accept the union, and it took steps to acquire the lost territories. In 1924 a Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) was established within the USSR on the border of Romania. The Ukrainian town of Balta was its capital until 1929, when the capital was transferred to Tiraspol. Less than one-third of the population of the Moldavian ASSR was Romanian in the mid-1920s. In 1939 Bessarabiya was granted to the USSR in the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, the Nazi-Soviet agreement that divided Central and Eastern Europe. Although Romania declared its neutrality in September 1939, the USSR forced it to concede Bessarabiya, and Soviet forces occupied the region in June 1940. At first Soviet authorities continued to call the new territory Bessarabiya. But on August 2, 1940, the Moldavian SSR was proclaimed, and the former Moldavian ASSR abolished. The Trans-Dniester region was transferred to the new republic, while the remainder of the Moldavian ASSR reverted to Ukraine. The Moldavian SSR was reoccupied by Romanian forces from 1941 to 1944, when Soviet forces again retook the territory. It remained part of the USSR until the collapse of Communism in 1991, when an independent Moldovan republic was established. In December of that year Moldova's first popular election was held and Mircea Snegur was elected president. Snegur had become president in 1990 when the republic was still part of the USSR. In December 1991 Moldova joined the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a loose organization of former Soviet republics, amid the USSR's disintegration into 15 successor states. Moldova became a member of the United Nations (UN) in 1992. The issue of ethnicity and territoriality has dominated the political scene in Moldova since the late 1980s. After a law was passed in 1989 making Romanian the official language, separatist movements appeared in the southern and eastern portions of the country. Local officials refused to enact the language law in the area east of the Dniester, where Russians and Ukrainians make up slightly more than half the population. A political group promoting greater autonomy for the area, Yedinstvo (Russian for "unity"), was formed. In September 1990, after a referendum on autonomy was held, the local leadership created a Trans-Dniester Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR), which was preceded by the formation of an autonomous Gagauz Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) in the southeast. In 1991, when the Moldovan government declared independence from the USSR, the Trans-Dniester leadership declared independence from Moldova; this declaration was not recognized by any country, however, including Russia. Fighting soon broke out, and in 1992 Moldovan president Mircea Snegur authorized military action against the rebels. The secessionists, aided by contingents of Russian cossacks and the Russian 14th Army, consolidated control over the disputed area. The Moldovan government made several futile requests for UN intervention, but was forced to settle for a combined Russian-Dniester-Moldovan peacekeeping force. In May 1993 the Moldovan side made several concessions to the opposing side, including the presence of Russian forces in eastern Moldova until the region was granted special political status. Unsatisfied, the Trans-Dniester leadership demanded that the Moldovan legislature rescind parts of its 1991 declaration of independence and return the republic to a subordinate political position within the CIS. In February 1994 Moldova held its first free parliamentary elections. The Agrarian Democratic Party, led by former Communists, won the largest number of seats. A bloc of Socialist parties won the next largest percentage. In April the legislature cemented Moldova's status within the CIS by ratifying the 1991 agreement; however, the country declared that it would not take part in CIS military or monetary alliances. In July 1994 the country's first constitution was adopted. The constitution reaffirmed Moldova's status as an independent political and cultural unit and included provisions for the autonomy of the breakaway regions of Gagauz and Trans-Dniester. It also referred the country's official language "Moldovan,"rather than "Romanian." In August the government reached an agreement with Russia to remove all Russian troops from the Trans-Dniester region within three years; the agreement was made official in October. Snegur refused to meet the secessionists' demands for recognition of Trans-Dniester as an independent state, however, and the regional conflict continued. In June 1995 Moldovan president Mircea Snegur resigned from the ruling Agrarian Democratic Party, accusing the party of attempting to reduce the powers of the president and of opposing economic reform. In August he became the chairman of a new, centrist political party, the Party of Revival and Conciliation. In July the country was granted full membership in the Council of Europe. In December 1996 Snegur was defeated in the country's presidential elections by Petru Lucinschi, Moldova's top-ranking Communist official in Soviet times. Lucinschi, who was supported by the ruling Agrarian Democratic Party and other leftist parties, advocated closer ties with the CIS and Russia. Negotiations between the Moldovan government and Trans-Dniester leaders resumed in 1997, having been frozen since mid-1996. In early May both sides signed a memorandum calling for the peaceful settlement of their conflict. According to the agreement, which was mediated by Russia, Moldova will retain its present borders, including Trans-Dniester. The document envisions a large degree of autonomy for Trans-Dniester and calls for future talks to determine the official status of the region. The complete removal of Russian troops is contingent on the two sides reaching a mutually acceptable settlement.