History of Moldova

Another variant is that was named after a river by a Hungarian noble.

Still needed something about Moldovian middle ages

The Moldovians were sujecated to vassal status by the ottoman turks after their hard fought conquest of Wallachia. The greatest Moldavian, aptly named Stefan cel Mare[?] (Stefan the Great) with his army of Boyars and retainers fought of invasions from the Turks, the Polish and the Tatars. Stefan fought 36 major battles and only lost 2. At the end of his reign, Moldovian independence was secured and no more Moldovian gold went to turkish hands as tribute. Moldova then experienced a "slump." Weak kings let incompitent boyars rule the state and not pay taxes, bankrupting the state. With little money for defense, Turkish, Polish, Tartar raids left the country poor and war torn.

In the 1812 Russia occupies the eastern half of Moldova, (known as Bessarabia after the name of Wallachian king Basarab I) and will remain like this for a century.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917 encouraged the various nationalities in the Russian Empire to gain their independence, Moldova became an independent Republic on December 2, 1917 and on the request of the new Moldovan administration ("Sfatul tării"), on December 13, Romanian troops enter Bessarabia and on March 27, 1918 voted for the unification with Romania.

Formerly ruled by Romania as the principality of Moldavia, Moldova was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940. At the end of World War II, Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic was formed from Moldavian Autonomous SSR (previously a part of Ukrainian SSR) and occupied territory of Moldova.

The territory stayed as a part of the USSR after the WWII as Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic and the state had a brutal denationalization policy toward the native Romanian population, the Soviets massacrating, imprisoning and deporting to Siberia almost a million of innocent people, just for trying to change the population structure of Moldova. Also many Russians and other minorities were colonized in the place of the deportees.

The ethnic cleansing was especially directed against the Romanian intellectuals that decided to stay in Moldova after the war and propaganda was made against everything that was Romanian.

After the war, the forced collectivization of peasants followed, national history changed according to the Soviet needs and of course the education and culture were forced to be in Russian.

Although independent from the USSR since 1991, Russian forces have remained on territory east of the Nistru (Dnister) River supporting the Slavic majority population (mostly Ukrainians, Russians and Bulgarians) in that region who have proclaimed a "Transnistria" republic on the former territory of Moldavian Autonomous SSR.

Although it is more than 10 years after the independence declaration, the traces of the Soviet regime's propaganda are still very deep and the Romanian Moldovans are still afraid and ashamed of their origin.

See also : Moldova, Moldavia, History of Romania, Bessarabia