Moldovans, sometimes referred to as Moldavians (, , ), are an ethnic group native to Moldova, who mostly speak the Romanian language, also referred to locally as Moldovan. Moldovans form significant communities in Romania, Italy, Ukraine and Russia.
There is an ongoing controversy in Moldova over whether Moldovans constitute an ethnic group separate from Romanians or not. 77.18% and 7.9% of the Moldovan population declared Moldovan and Romanian ethnicity respectively in the 2024 Moldovan census, with 49.2% declaring their mother language to be Moldovan and 31.3% declaring it to be Romanian. According to opinion polls, around one third of Moldova's population supports unification with Romania.
The term "Moldavian" can also be used to refer to the inhabitants of the territory of the historical Principality of Moldavia, currently divided among Romania (47.5%), Moldova (30.5%) and Ukraine (22%). In Romania, natives of Western Moldavia identifying with the term declare Romanian ethnicity,"Official Chisinau Seeks Recognition Of Moldovan Ethnicity And Minority In Romania", The Jamestown Foundation, 27 February 2007. while the natives of the Republic of Moldova are usually called "Bessarabians" ().
History
According to Miron Costin, a prominent chronicler from 17th-century Moldavia, the inhabitants of the Principality of Moldavia spoke Latin and called themselves "Moldavians", but also "Romans" (with the local form "român/râmlean") which, he notes, comes from "romanus".Costin, Miron (1958). "De neamul moldovenilor". In Panaitescu, P. P. (ed.). Opere. București: Editura de Stat pentru Literatură și Artă. p. 261. "Şi acum mulţi ne zic noao, ţării noastre [Moldova] şi Ţării Muntenéşti, streinii, Daţiia, însă norodul, neamul lăcuitorilor, nu ş-au schimbatŭ numele său, ci tot romanus, apoi cu vréme şi îndelungate vacuri romani, apoi rumâni pănă astăzi."Costin, Miron (1958). "De neamul moldovenilor". In Panaitescu, P. P. (ed.). Opere. București: Editura de Stat pentru Literatură și Artă. p. 268. "Aşa şi neamul acésta, de carele scriem, al ţărâlor acestora, numele vechiŭ şi mai direptŭ ieste rumân, adecă râmlean, [...] tot acest nume au ţinut şi ţin pănă astăzi şi încă mai bine munténii decât moldovénii, că ei şi acum zic şi scriu ţara sa rumânească, ca şi românii cei din Ardeal." "Şi aşa ieste acestor ţări şi ţărâi noastre, Moldovei şi Ţărâi Munteneşti numele cel direptŭ de moşie, ieste rumân, cum să răspundŭ şi acum toţi acéia din Ţările Ungureşti lăcuitori şi munténii ţara lor şi scriu şi răspundŭ cu graiul: Ţara Românească" Also, the Slavic neighbours called Moldovans "Vlachs" or "Volokhs", a term also used to refer to all native Romance speakers from Eastern Europe and the Balkan Peninsula.Roger-William Seton Watson, A history of the Romanians, Cambridge University Press, 1934.
In 1812, the Russian Empire received the eastern half of Moldavia from the Ottoman Empire and named it Bessarabia. As the ethnonym "Romanian" was gaining more and more popularity throughout the remaining territory of Moldavia and Bukovina during the 19th century, its dissemination in Bessarabia, a more backward and rural province of the Russian Empire at the time, was welcomed mostly by the Romanian-oriented intellectuals, while the majority of the rural population continued to use the old self-identification "Moldovans".Cristina Petrescu, "Contrasting/Conflicting Identities:Bessarabians, Romanians, Moldovans", in: Nation-Building and Contested Identities, Polirom, 2001, p. 157.Charles King, Moldovan Identity and the Politics of Pan-Romanianism, Slavic Review, Vol. 53, No. 2. (Summer, 1994), pp. 345–368.
Some authors observe that the Russian officials also initially preferred to refer to the native inhabitants of Bessarabia as "Romanians" (or "Volochi"), but after the 1859 unification of Moldavia and Wallachia they gradually began using the term "Moldavians" for them, to justify the idea of Russifiers and Pan-Slavists to create an identity different from that of the Romanians of Western Moldavia. Historian van Meurs however indicates that some Russian official documents and scholarly studies in the 19th century actually continued to use both "Romanians" and "Moldavians" when referring to the local population, noting that the Russian policy which restricted the use of the Romanian language in Bessarabia was rather part of the general tendency of Russification and of promotion of a tsarist nationality policy as such.
Van Meurs concludes that before the October Revolution the inhabitants of Bessarabia probably considered themselves "Moldavians" in a "natural, primarily local-territorial sense", and there had been no consistent government-sponsored effort to influence the local nation-building process by promoting a Moldavian identity. Likewise, historian Charles King notes that the Moldovan peasant's view of his own national identity was not the product of Russian assimilationist policies but had instead remained virtually frozen since 1812. The Romanian researcher Irina Livezeanu further notes that the Russification policies did not greatly affect the identity of the Moldavians, as their overwhelming majority were illiterate peasants.Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building, and Ethnic Struggle, 1918–1930. Cornell University Press, 2000, p. 94
Until the 1920s, Romanian historians generally considered Moldovans as a subgroup of the Romanian ethnos.King, p. 2. After 1924, within the newly created Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet authorities supported the creation of the Moldovan language standards allegedly in order to prove that Moldovans form a separate ethnic group.King, p. 3.Michael Bruchis. The Language Policy of the CPSU and the Linguistic Situation in Soviet Moldavia, in: Soviet Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1. (Jan. 1984), pp. 119.
In the past, the terms "Moldovan" or "Moldavian" have been used to refer to the population of the historical Principality of Moldavia. However, for the inhabitants of Bessarabia living under the Russian rule, the term gained an ethnic connotation by the beginning of the 20th century: in May 1917, at a congress of Bessarabian teachers, a dispute arose over the identification of the native population; a group protested against being called "Romanians", affirming they were "Moldovans",Stuart J. Kaufman, Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War, Cornell University Press, 2001, , p. 134. while another group, led by poet Alexei Mateevici, supported the view that the Moldovans are also Romanians. Mateevici's speech at the teachers' congress at Romanian wikisource
In March 1918, Bessarabia (the Moldovan Democratic Republic) joined the Kingdom of Romania, following a vote of Sfatul Țării. The circumstances surrounding the vote were themselves complex, since, at the request of the Sfatul Țării, Romanian troops were present in Bessarabia, as it was facing external threats and anarchy within.Charles King, The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the politics of culture, Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, 2000, page 33 "The occupation of Bessarabia by the Romanian[s troops], although carried out after an appeal of members of the Sfatul Țării and other Moldovan organizations, was not universally welcomed"Cristina Petrescu, "Contrasting/Conflicting Identities: Bessarabians, Romanians, Moldovans", in: Nation-Building and Contested identities: Romanian & Hungarian Case Studies. Editura Polirom, 2001. As Sorin Alexandrescu suggests, taking into account the situation at that time, the chaos in Russia and the undecided balance in the war, it is reasonable to suppose that the presence of Romanian troops in Bessarabia created a situation in which the majority in the Sfatul Tãrii decided to rally the faction that was advocating the union with Romania as a solution for overcoming of the triple threat of Bolshevism, Ukrainian expansionism and general anarchy.
By the time of the union, the peasants of Bessarabia, who constituted the majority of Romanian speakers in the region, clung to a Moldavian identity and did not undergo the same nation-building as the ones in Romania. Moreover, during the interwar, peasants in all regions of historical Moldavia (Bessarabia, Bukovina and Western Moldavia) where more likely to identify themselves as Moldavians than city-dwellers. Several researchers who visited the area around World War I, including the Romanian historian Ion Nistor and French geographer Emmanuel de Martonne testified that most Bessarabian peasants called themselves Moldavians. On the other hand, the small Moldavian urban elite was Russified to a large degree.Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building, and Ethnic Struggle, 1918–1930. Cornell University Press, 2000, pp. 92-93. Pan-Romanian nationalism was "almost wholly" imported into the region around World War I by propagandists from Transylvania, Bukovina and the Old Kingdom.Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building, and Ethnic Struggle, 1918–1930. Cornell University Press, 2000, pp. 96-97.
The Romanian state promoted a common identity for all its inhabitants. Owing partly to its relative underdevelopment compared to other regions of Greater Romania, as well as to the low competence and corruption of the new Romanian administration in this province, the integration process of Bessarabia in the unified Romanian state was less successful than in other regions and was soon to be disrupted by the Soviet occupation.Charles King, The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the politics of culture, Hoover Institution Press, Stanford 2000.Cristina Petrescu, "Contrasting/Conflicting Identities: Bessarabians, Romanians, Moldovans", in: Nation-Building and Contested identities: Romanian & Hungarian Case Studies. Editura Polirom, 2001, p. 157: "The members of this overwhelmingly rural, mostly illiterate and quasi-immobile peasant population, who had no sense of national identification with the Romanians, but had idealized memories from the Tsarist period, found themselves overnight citizens of Romania. It was the transition from the Tsarist-type of local government to the Romanian-type of centralized modern state with a corrupt administration that alienated the Bessarabians, many of whom felt, as the interviewed persons bear witness, that they were rather occupied by their alleged brothers than united with them."Cristina Petrescu, "Contrasting/Conflicting Identities: Bessarabians, Romanians, Moldovans", in: Nation-Building and Contested identities: Romanian & Hungarian Case Studies, p. 154: "The stories told by a group of Bessarabians coming from several villages of Bălți county, who, it should be noted, chose to come to Romania instead of living under the Soviet regime, seems to suggest that their native region was the only province acquired after World War I where the Romanian central authorities did not succeed in integrating their own coethnics, among whom some even felt nostalgia for the Tsarist period. Although citizens of Greater Romania, a large majority of Bessarabians did not even begin to consider themselves part of the Romanian nation, going beyond their allegiance to regional and local ties.11 In short, as these oral history interviews reveal, during the interwar period, the Romanian homogenizing state failed in its attempt to transform the peasants of Bessarabia into Romanians."