Forgotten world (23): Moldova

Moldova is one of the many ‘new’ countries that emerged with the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. Totally landlocked, it is located between Romania to the west and Ukraine to the east and has a population of almost 3.5 million. In fact, two-thirds of Moldovans are of Romanian descent, the languages are virtually identical, and the two countries share a common cultural heritage.
Moldova is one of the very poorest countries in Europe and has a large foreign debt and high unemployment. Tiny though the new nation is, it is bitterly divided.
The industrialised territory to the east of the River Dniester, generally known as Trans-Dniester or the Dniester region, was formally an autonomous area within Ukraine before 1940 when the Soviet Union combined it with Bessarabia to form the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.
This area is mainly inhabited by Russian and Ukrainian speakers. As people there became increasingly alarmed at the prospect of closer ties with Romania in the tumultuous twilight years of the Soviet Union, Trans-Dniester unilaterally declared independence from Moldova in 1990.
The war claimed more than 1,500 lives, an uneasy peace now prevails, but the region of Trans-Dniester is not recognised internationally (although people there call the territory Pridnestrovskaia Moldavskaia Respublica and claim that it is nation).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006 at 7:08 am and is filed under World current affairs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

3 Comments

  • Janet
    August 2nd, 2006 at 9:11 am

    I met two lovely Moldovan girls last summer,Natalya and Nathalia, one of whom was a Russian speaker and the other a Romanian speaker,when they were in Ross-on-Wye for 4 months fruit picking. They were desperately earning as much as they could, before returning to Moldova to start their preferred careers after graduating, on salaries much lower than they could earn here picking fruit. Even so, they acknowledged they were lucky to find jobs at all,given the economic state of their country.

  • Roger Darlington
    August 2nd, 2006 at 9:26 am

    Good to see Romanian- and Russian-speaking Moldovans as friends – although this might be easier when both are abroad.

  • Billy Hayes
    August 7th, 2006 at 2:55 pm

    Roger,As part of CWU Humaniterina Aid,I visited Moldova and Trans-Diniester in 2005.Lots of contradictions.Lets get together.Billy Hayes