Moldova's language history
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I've decided to post this article as a new topic because I think it's too big to be posted in Niamh's topic (and unfortunately I couldn't find it on the internet, otherwise I would simply give the link).
In fact this is an extract form a bigger article "Towards International Norms on Linguistic Rights: The Russian-Romanian Controversy in Moldova" by John Quigley (Professor of Law, Ohio State University) published in "Connecticut Journal of International Law" in 1994. It covers Moldova's language history from pre-modern times to early 1990s and answers many questions raised in Niamh's topic.
MOLDOVA'S LANGUAGE HISTORY
A. Pre-modern history
1. Language Use in Bessarabia Under Russia
Russia came into control of the bulk of the territory now called Moldova in 1812. The territory was called Bessarabia, named for the Bassarab family of Wallachia, a territory lying somewhat to the west. Bessarabia was the eastern part of the Principality of Moldavia, which formed in the fourteenth century and which since the sixteenth century had been under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. Under the Ottomans, Moldavia enjoyed a status that afforded it considerable autonomy.*
[*The greater portion of Moldavia (the western sector) is in present-day Romania. In 1859, Moldavia and neighboring Wallachia, which is also predominantly Romanian-speaking, merged to form the state of Romania.]
Bessarabia stretched from the Pruth River on the west to the Dnestr River on the east, where the Dnestr separated it from the Ukraine, which was part of the Russian Empire. Ethnically, Bessarabia's population was Romanian, its inhabitants speaking the Latin-derived Romanian language that developed on the eastern fringe of the Roman Empire. The Ottoman Empire also held a small piece of territory on the east bank of the Dnestr, just to the east of Bessarabia.
Following warfare in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries between the Ottoman Empire and Russia, the Ottoman Empire ceded to Russia first the territory east of the Dnestr, and then Bessarabia. Russian Tsar Alexander I instituted a regime of autonomy for Bessarabia, respecting its former status under the Ottoman Empire. The Russian and Romanian languages were afforded equality in government administration.
However, in 1828 a new tsar, Nicholas I, abolished Bessarabia's autonomy, turning it into a province of the Russian Empire. Russian became the official language of Bessarabia. Under an 1828 law, Russian was to be used in official proceedings in Bessarabia, though "in case of need" translation into Romanian was to be provided.
During the nineteenth century, Russians and Ukrainians migrated into Bessarabia. Russians settled primarily in urban areas and by 1900 constituted eight percent of Bessarabia's population. Ukrainians settled primarily in the countryside, constituting nearly twenty percent of Bessarabia's population by 1900.
The population of Bessarabia during the nineteenth century was overwhelmingly rural and illiterate. The tsarist government's policy of promoting the Russian language did not significantly affect the rural population, which did not learn Russian and continued to use Romanian. However, in the cities Yiddish and Russian became the primary languages of communication, and the Moldavians came to speak Russian. Russian became the language of instruction in schools.
The use of Russian by Moldavians was facilitated by the fact that both Romanian and Russian were written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Romanian was originally written in the Latin alphabet, but in the fifteenth century the Cyrillic alphabet began to be used instead because the Romanians were Orthodox Christians and the Cyrillic alphabet was used in Old Church Slavonic - the language of the Orthodox church. Although in Romania the Latin alphabet was reintroduced in the nineteenth century*, in Bessarabia the Cyrillic alphabet continued in use into the twentieth century.
[*The change came officially in Wallachia in 1860 and in Moldavia in 1863 and is generally attributed to the nationalism that swept Europe at that period]
2. Language Use in Bessarabia Under Romania
In 1918, following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Romania sent troops into Bessarabia at the request of a newly convened Bessarabian assembly (Sfatul Tarii) and Romania annexed it, re-incorporating it into the Moldavia province from which it had been taken by Russia in 1812.
The new Soviet government, militarily weak, was unable to resist the incorporation of Bessarabia by Romania. It limited itself to denouncing the annexation as a violation of its rights.
Once in control in Bessarabia, the Romanian government promoted the use of Romanian, changing the language of instruction in the schools from Russian to Romanian. Romanian began to be written, as in Romania, in the Latin script.
Many Moldavians, however, continued to have their children educated in Russian, viewing it as a language with higher prestige and utility. An American Committee on the Rights of Religious Minorities, which investigated Romania in 1927, found that in Bessarabian towns, Russian remained the language in most common use. Illiteracy remained high among Romanian speakers.
3. Language Use in Soviet Moldavia Until World War II
In 1924, the Soviet government of the Ukraine designated the Moldavian-populated area of the western Ukraine, just east of the Dnestr River, as the Autonomous Moldavian Socialist Soviet Republic (Moldavian A.S.S.R.). Forty percent of the population in this area was Moldavian, with the remainder primarily Russian and Ukrainian. The attribution of autonomous status to the area was in keeping with a policy of the Soviet government of affording a modest degree of autonomy to territories of minority groups. Autonomy gave Moldavians substantial representation in local governance, plus group representation in the legislative organs of the Ukraine. In this territory the tsarist government had conducted its business in Russian. The government of the Moldavian A.S.S.R. switched to Romanian as the language of the central government apparatus. In the 1930s it began to switch to Romanian in local government in areas of predominantly Moldavian population.
Industrialization began in the Moldavian A.S.S.R. as part of the Soviet five-year plans. Bessarabia, under Romanian control, remained economically backward and overwhelmingly rural. In the Moldavian population of the Moldavian A.S.S.R., fewer children attended school than among Russians or Ukrainians. As of 1925, there were three hundred schools in the Moldavian A.S.S.R., of which only eleven were Romanian-language schools. Inroads were made on illiteracy in the Moldavian A.S.S.R. as mandatory schooling for children was introduced, conducted in Romanian in Moldavian-inhabited areas.
The government of the Moldavian A.S.S.R. promoted adult literacy in the Moldavian population, teaching Romanian in the Latin script. In 1933, 38,568 Moldavians were studying Romanian. The government began to publish newspapers in Romanian.
4. Language Use in Soviet Moldavia 1940-1991
As World War II approached, Bessarabia once again became separated from the Romanian province of Moldavia. Under a secret protocol to the German-Soviet pact of 1939 (Ribbentrop-Molotov), Germany let Bessarabia fall within the Soviet sphere of influence. In June 1940, the Soviet government presented an ultimatum to the Romanian government to cede Bessarabia, arguing that Bessarabia had been seized from it unlawfully after World War I. Rather than confront the stronger power, Romania withdrew from Bessarabia.
In August 1940, the Soviet government turned the bulk of Bessarabia into the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, thus making it one of the constituent republics of the U.S.S.R. However, the Soviet government detached the northernmost and southernmost districts of Bessarabia and gave them to the Ukrainian S.S.R. At the same time, it took the Moldavian A.S.S.R. out of the Ukrainian S.S.R. and put it into the new Moldavian S.S.R. The former Moldavian A.S.S.R. constituted about ten per cent of the Moldavian S.S.R. The government of the Moldavian S.S.R. changed the writing of Romanian from the Latin back to the Cyrillic alphabet, as it had been written before the 1860s.
When Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, Romania, which was allied with Germany, sent troops that occupied Bessarabia. Germany and Romania remained in control until 1944, when the Soviet army took Bessarabia back, and the Soviet Union once again governed it as part of the Moldavian S.S.R.
In Chisinau (Kishinev), the capital city of the Moldavian S.S.R., a state university was opened in 1946, with most instruction conducted in Russian. Knowledge of Russian as a second language spread among the Moldavians and the vast majority came to speak Russian well enough for basic communication. The change, however, was modest because, as indicated above, the urban Moldavians had spoken Russian since the nineteenth century. Only a minority of Russians and Ukrainians learned Romanian. Russians and Ukrainians occupied top positions in government and industry in numbers somewhat, though not dramatically, higher than their numbers in the population.
Against these indicators of Russification, other developments promoted the use of Romanian. The government of the Moldavian S.S.R. organized adult literacy classes in the former Bessarabia teaching Moldavians to read and write Romanian. Primary and secondary education became more widespread. The use of Romanian by the Moldavian population was fostered by the proliferation of Romanian-language schools, by the publication of Romanian-language school texts, and by instruction by Moldavian teachers. School attendance picked up in the Moldavian population and the Romanian language was used increasingly in education. Court proceedings were conducted in either Romanian or Russian.
In addition, the number of Moldavians in urban areas increased during the Soviet period, so that by 1970 Moldavians for the first time outnumbered Russians in Moldavia's towns and cities. In dealings with other Moldavians, the Moldavians used Romanian. In 1981, an analyst wrote that "Russian linguistic and cultural hegemony seems to be in decline."
After World War II, Moldavians constituted sixty-five percent of the population of the newly formed Moldavian S.S.R. Ukrainians and Russians made up about thirteen percent each. Russians were brought into Moldavia in engineering and other technical fields. Many settled there, but Russians nonetheless did not increase as a percentage of the population. In 1990, the population breakdown had not changed substantially since World War II. Moldavians constituted sixty-four percent of the population, Ukrainians fourteen percent, and Russians thirteen percent.
B. Modern History
1. Language Use in Moldova
The political change that swept the Soviet Union in the late 1980s brought assertions of nationality rights in the non-Russian territories, including Moldavia. In 1989 the parliament of the Moldavian S.S.R. made Romanian the official language, while recognizing Russian as a language of inter-nationality communication in the U.S.S.R. In the same law, the parliament decided that Romanian should be written not in Cyrillic, but in the Latin alphabet.
In 1991, when the U.S.S.R. broke up, Moldavia became an independent state under the name Moldova.* [*The name "Moldova" was used because it is the Romanian version of "Moldavia."] Even after independence, language policy continued to be set by the 1989 law. One important provision of that law declared the right of citizens to use their own language in public life. It decreed that persons working in the public or private sector who came into contact with the public must know both Romanian and Russian. This provision was aimed at protecting the Moldovians, since most Russian employees of public and private establishments did not speak Romanian. Most Moldavian employees knew Russian, and thus the Russian-speaking public did not need this protection.
The 1989 statute said that the provision requiring knowledge of both Romanian and Russian by employees who came into contact with the public would go into effect five years hence, namely, on January 1, 1994. The idea of this phase-in time was to afford Russians an opportunity to learn Romanian. The expectation was that the government would undertake a program of Romanian language instruction for Russians.
Implementation of the 1989 provision proved problematic. The government did not make Romanian language instruction available on any substantial basis. Few Russians learned Romanian by the January 1, 1994 deadline. The practical difficulty for Russians was exacerbated by the fact that since Moldavians spoke Russian, and were in general willing to use it to communicate with Russians, there was little actual need to know Romanian. Thus, the law's insistence on Romanian was taken by Russians more as a political statement than as a solution to any actual problem of communication.
However, the Department of Nationality Problems, responsible for implementation, softened the effect of the provision by determining that the level of knowledge of Moldavian that would be required would be low. It said that knowledge of a basic vocabulary of only three hundred Romanian words would suffice. The department said that it did not contemplate mass dismissals but sought to work with Russians trying to learn Romanian rather than to fire them.
However, the Department on occasion appeared quite aggressive in insisting on use of Romanian. The Department conducted frequent spot checks at various establishments, to determine the level of use of Romanian. Typical violations uncovered were the issuance of documents in Russian, typewriters with keys in the Cyrillic script, official stamps in Cyrillic, and job-related conversations conducted in Russian. Inspectors noted as "successes" the replacement of Russian-language nameplates with Romanian-language nameplates, wall slogans written in Romanian, and typewriters with Latin script. The Department turned down the request of a large enterprise with a Russian-language name to continue using the name because the name, in Russian, was well known to its clientele. A parliamentarian criticized such tactics as leading to increased ethnic tension and to emigration of Russian speakers.
Softening the requirement to a knowledge of three hundred words ran the risk of rendering the provision ludicrous, because a person knowing so little could hardly deal with the public. Moreover, it was not clear that such a low standard was being applied, as Russians claimed they were being fired even prior to the January 1, 1994 deadline. The Russian community in Moldova experienced panic, fearing it would no longer be able to function in the economy. The Department of Nationality Problems did not make Romanian language instruction widely available to Russians. Some Russians emigrated from Moldova.
The pressure on Russians to learn Romanian was rationalized by recalling the many years during which Russian had been forced on Romanian speakers. In a 1992 declaration on minority rights, the Moldovan parliament recited the percentages of the various nationalities in Moldova, stating that these percentages were reached "as a result of the imperial policy of assimilation conducted over a long period of history."
In the 1989 language law, the parliament had stated in a preamble that one of its aims was to "eliminate deformations in language structure" in the country. Thus, the parliament viewed its act of declaring Romanian the official language as a corrective to past suppression of Romanian.
2. Language Use in the Transdnestr
In 1990, the area east of the Dnestr River (the former Moldavian A.S.S.R.) broke away from the central government of the Moldavian S.S.R., calling itself the Transdnestr Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. With Moldavians making up only forty percent of the population there, the area's administration, based in the city of Tiraspol, was predominantly Russian. At issue was the ascendancy of Moldavian nationalist sentiment.
The 1989 language legislation was a key grievance of the Russians who supported the breakaway. The leadership of the new territory, which claimed to be an independent state, objected to the switch to Latin script in Romanian, to the declaration of Romanian as the only official language, and to the requirement that Russian speakers learn Romanian at the risk of losing their jobs. The breakaway legislative organ, the Supreme Soviet, passed a decree rejecting application of the 1989 language law in the Transdnestr.
Russian continued to be used as the official language in the Transdnestrian Moldavian Republic. The 1989 language law was not implemented there. The breakaway administration, which later changed the name of its territory to the Transdnestr Moldavian Republic, required that the Cyrillic script be used in schools in the writing of Moldavian. It produced new school texts using Cyrillic and required the Romanian language schools to use them. Many Moldavian parents objected, and some refused to send their children to these schools. Some sent their children to Russian-language schools, because they considered it useless for their children to learn Moldavian in an alphabet that was used to write Romanian nowhere else but in the tiny Transdnestr Moldavian Republic.
In 1993, parents in the town of Bender organized public demonstrations over the issue. The Bender City Council held a heated meeting on the topic and agreed that in one Bender school Latin alphabet would be used, while in the other schools Cyrillic would be used, but special classes would be held in which students could learn Moldavian in the Latin alphabet.
The central government charged that the breakaway administration was not providing enough schools for the Moldavian speakers. It cited figures showing that although forty percent of the Transdnestr population is Moldavian, only 22,6% of the students in secondary schools were studying in Romanian, while 77.4% were studying in Russian. The central administration objected to the breakaway administration's refusal to permit use of the Latin alphabet in Moldavian schools.
The breakaway administration feared that Romanian was being promoted in a way that would exclude Russians from public life. Within days after passage of the 1989 language law, workers in the territory of the breakaway administration went on strike in protest of the law. The breakaway administration decreed that Russian, Romanian, and Ukrainian were all official languages in its territory.
While other issues were involved in the separation of the former Moldavian A.S.S.R. from Moldova, the language controversy was central to the conflict.
Re: Moldova's language history [WARNING: a very big article]
Quote:
Originally Posted by Triton
[continued from
http://masterrussian.net/mforum/viewtopic.php?t=4798 ]
4. Language Use in Soviet Moldavia 1940-1991
Against these indicators of Russification, other developments promoted the use of
Romanian. The government of the Moldavian S.S.R. organized adult literacy classes in the former Bessarabia teaching Moldavians to read and write
Romanian. Primary and secondary education became more widespread. The use of
Romanian by the Moldavian population was fostered by the proliferation of
Romanian-language schools, by the publication of Romanian-language school texts, and by instruction by Moldavian teachers. School attendance picked up in the Moldavian population and the Romanian language was used increasingly in education. Court proceedings were conducted in either
Romanian or Russian.
Only, in the Soviet Union itself (including the MSSR of course) this language was always called молдавский, Moldavian (Moldovan). It was unthinkable to hear it called Romanian. I think the Soviet authorities made it a point that it should be called Moldavian.
