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Russia Ruled Moldova 154 Years. Why Does It Still Speak Romanian? — Transcript

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0:00Russia ruled Moldova for 154 years.
0:03[music] So why does it still speak
0:05Romanian? In Moldova's 2024 census, 80.5
0:10% of people named Romanian or Moldovan
0:13as their mother tongue. Two names, one
0:15language as linguists see it. [music]
0:17And this question didn't come from me,
0:20it came from you. Under my Romania
0:21video, one question keeps coming up. If
0:24Rome explains why Romanians speak what
0:27they speak, why does Moldova speak the
0:29same language? It's a fair question,
0:32[music] but the premise needs a small
0:34correction first. Britannica says this
0:36region was probably part of the Kingdom
0:38of Dacia in the 2nd century AD.
0:40It also notes [music]
0:41remains of a wall built by the Roman
0:44Emperor Trajan here. Whether it ever sat
0:46inside Rome's actual province is less
0:49clear, so I won't claim it either way.
0:51But that's not really the puzzle. The
0:53puzzle is what happened later. A second
0:56empire ruled this land for a century and
0:58a half, and today its language is the
1:00first language of about one person in
1:02nine. The usual answer you'll hear is
1:05short. Moldovans resisted Russification.
1:08That's only part of it because Moscow
1:10didn't just push Russian. It did
1:13something stranger. It took the local
1:14language and gave it a new name,
1:17Moldovan.
1:18It wrote it in an alphabet based on
1:20Russian Cyrillic and it promoted it as a
1:23language separate from Romanian. That
1:25project ran for most of the Soviet era.
1:27Then the Latin script came back in 1989
1:31and in 2023 a law put the name Romanian
1:34[music] into Moldova's laws and
1:36constitution.
1:37So this is really a story about a name,
1:39an alphabet, and who lived where. Let's
1:42start with the count.
1:44From 1812 to 1918 this region was part
1:47of the Russian Empire. That's 106 years.
1:50[music]
1:50From 1918 to 1940 it belonged to
1:53Romania. That gap doesn't count. From
1:561940 to 1941 it was Soviet, about one
2:00year.
2:01From 1941 to 1944, Romanian [music]
2:04again. From 1944 to 1991, Soviet. 47
2:10years, [music]
2:10106 + 1 + 47
2:14154.
2:16Two footnotes because I'd rather be
2:18precise. 154 is a rounded count. That
2:22first Soviet spell lasted about 13
2:24months, and from 1856 to 1878, a strip
2:28of Southern Bessarabia was handed back
2:30to Moldavia. One more thing about names.
2:33For most of this story, the region is
2:35called Bessarabia. Today's Moldova was
2:38carved mostly out of it. [music] To see
2:40what Russia took, we need to go back
2:42further. At the end of the 14th century,
2:45the south of this region became part of
2:46Wallachia. The name Bessarabia probably
2:49comes from Wallachia's ruling family,
2:51the Basarab dynasty. In the 15th
2:54century, the whole province became part
2:56of the principality of Moldavia. Then
2:58the Ottomans arrived.
3:00In 1484, they took Akkerman and Chilia.
3:03In the 16th century, Moldavia submitted
3:06to the Ottomans. The rest of Bessarabia
3:08came under Turkish control, [music] but
3:11it stayed Moldavian. Britannica calls
3:13Bessarabia an integral part of the
3:15Romanian principality of Moldavia right
3:18up to 1812. [music] Russia had been
3:20pressing south for a century. Between
3:221711 and 1812, it occupied the region
3:25five times. The fifth time, it stayed.
3:28[music] In 1812, the Treaty of Bucharest
3:31gave Russia Bessarabia. That was half of
3:34Moldavia.
3:35And Moldavia didn't sign it away. Its
3:37Ottoman overlord, the Sultan, ceded it.
3:40Only after 1812 did the name Bessarabia
3:43stretch to cover the whole annexed
3:44region.
3:45Now look at the other half, the half
3:47Russia didn't take. In 1859, it united
3:51with Wallachia.
3:52Together, they became Romania. So one
3:55principality split down the middle. One
3:58half became part of Romania. The other
4:00half spent the next century inside
4:02Russia. Russia didn't start with
4:04Russification.
4:05From 1818 to 1828, Bessarabia had
4:09autonomy. It had a Moldavian governor
4:12and a Moldavian archbishop. That didn't
4:14last. By the end of the century,
4:16Russification was the dominant policy in
4:19the civil administration and in the
4:21church. Notice what that covers, the
4:24officers, the church. That's
4:26Britannica's description of policy. It
4:28doesn't say the villages switched
4:30languages, and I won't claim it either
4:32way. That's my reading of the source,
4:35not a separate fact. Here's the first
4:37surprise. If you picture Russia arriving
4:39and forcing Cyrillic on Romanian
4:41speakers, that's not quite how it went.
4:44The first known Romanian text is a
4:46letter from 1521, and most early
4:49Romanian texts were written in Cyrillic.
4:51Romanian had been written in Cyrillic
4:53for centuries before 1812. The switch to
4:56Latin letters happened later,
4:58and it happened on the other side of the
5:00border. Romania officially adopted the
5:02Latin alphabet around 1860. After
5:05Wallachia and Moldavia united, by then
5:08Bessarabia had been inside Russia for
5:09decades, so it never made that switch.
5:12Grammars printed there before 1917 use
5:16Cyrillic, whether they called the
5:17language Moldovan or Romanian. So the
5:21first alphabet gap wasn't Russia
5:23changing Bessarabia. It was Romania
5:25changing while Bessarabia stayed put. In
5:27November 1917, [music] a council called
5:30the Sfatul Țării was set up.
5:33On the 24th of January 1918, it declared
5:36Bessarabia independent, and that same
5:38year it voted to unite with Romania. On
5:41the 28th of October 1920, the Treaty of
5:44Paris confirmed the union. The Soviet
5:47Union never recognized it. Hold on to
5:50that. Everything Moscow did next with
5:52this language grows out of that refusal.
5:55On the 12th of October 1924,
5:58Moscow created the Moldavian Autonomous
6:00Soviet Socialist Republic.
6:02It sat inside Soviet Ukraine on the left
6:05bank of the Nistru, roughly where
6:06Transnistria is today. Its official
6:09capital was Chisinau, a city on the
6:11Romanian side of the border. The Soviet
6:14side declared it an occupied city.
6:16The real capitals were Balta from 1924
6:19to 1929 and then Tiraspol. Why build it
6:23at all?
6:24To back the Soviet claim to Bessarabia
6:26and as a propaganda base aimed at
6:28Romania.
6:30In 1926
6:31it had 572,339
6:34people. And this is where the new
6:36language was declared. Soviet policy
6:39declared Moldavian a Romance language,
6:41separate from Romanian.
6:43Here's why I think that mattered. And
6:45this is my reading, not a quote. If the
6:47people on both banks spoke a language
6:50separate from Romanian, the case that
6:52Bessarabia belonged with Romania looks
6:54weaker. [music]
6:55The name was part of the claim and the
6:57alphabet changed more than you'd expect.
6:59From 1924
7:01Moldovan was written in the Cyrillic
7:03alphabet based on Russian.
7:05In 1932
7:07a Soviet-wide campaign moved languages
7:09to Latin script the mass switched to.
7:12[music] In 1938
7:14a decree brought Cyrillic back.
7:16This time it stayed all the way to 1989.
7:20[music] Cyrillic, Latin, Cyrillic. Three
7:23alphabets in 14 years. Then came the
7:26deal that redrew the map.
7:28On the 23rd of August 1939
7:31Germany and the Soviet Union signed a
7:33pact known as Molotov-Ribbentrop. Its
7:36secret protocol put Bessarabia in the
7:38Soviet sphere. On the 26th of June 1940
7:41[music] the USSR demanded Bessarabia and
7:44Northern Bukovina.
7:46Romania complied. Soviet troops entered
7:49on the 28th of June. On the 2nd of
7:52August 1940 the Moldavian SSR was
7:54created. It took Central Bessarabia plus
7:57a strip of the old MSSR. The north
8:00around Khotin went to Soviet Ukraine.
8:03[music] So did the coast, the Budjak,
8:05even though 337,000
8:08lived there.
8:09Bessarabia had been one region since
8:121812. Now it was cut in three. The war
8:15turned it over again. In 1941, Romania
8:18joined the axis and took control of
8:20Bessarabia.
8:22In 1944, the Soviet Union took it back
8:25and restored the 1940 borders. From
8:27there, 47 years of Soviet rule. And
8:30those years changed who lived here. The
8:33deportation started early. In 1940 and
8:361941, at least 86,604
8:40people were arrested and deported.
8:42That's the figure from Romania's
8:43Presidential Commission for the study of
8:45the Communist dictatorship. Russian
8:47historians estimate about 90,000. On 6
8:51and the 7th of July 1949 came Operation
8:54South. More than 11,342
8:57Moldavian families were deported to
8:59Kazakhstan and Siberia. Families, not
9:02people. In April 1951,
9:05Operation North deported about 700 more
9:08families from religious minorities,
9:10mostly Jehovah's Witnesses. Estimates
9:12differ by source, so I've given each
9:14number with who counted it. People also
9:16moved in.
9:18After the war, Russians and Ukrainians
9:20settled in Moldova, mostly in the
9:22cities.
9:23They came as industrial workers and
9:24military staff.
9:26And locals had limited access to senior
9:28posts. You'd expect that to tip the
9:30country toward Russian.
9:32But look at where the settlers went, the
9:34cities. Remember that. It shows up again
9:37in today's census. Even inside Soviet
9:39Moldova, people pushed back on the
9:41alphabet.
9:42In 1965, the Writers' Congress of Soviet
9:45Moldova asked to return to the Latin
9:48script. Party leaders refused.
9:50And here's a point that gets lost. The
9:52language wasn't banned. [music] It was
9:54the official language of the Moldavian
9:56SSR under the name Moldavian.
9:59What Moscow controlled was the name and
10:01the alphabet. Then in 1989, the alphabet
10:05flipped one last time. On the 31st of
10:08August 1989, the Supreme Soviet of
10:11Moldova made Moldovan the official
10:13language, and it returned the language
10:15to the Latin alphabet.
10:16That was two years before independence.
10:19Since 1989, [music] Britannica says the
10:22language has been written in Roman
10:23letters.
10:25Counted up. Cyrillic had been the
10:26official script since 1938,
10:2951 years. Same words, different letters.
10:33On the 27th of August 1991, Moldova
10:36declared independence.
10:38It was recognized internationally that
10:40December. In 1992, it joined the United
10:44Nations, and the Declaration of
10:45Independence called the language
10:47Romanian.
10:49That might have settled it. It didn't.
10:51In 1994, Article 13 of the new
10:54Constitution called it Moldovan. In
10:561996, President Snegur proposed going
10:59back to Romanian.
11:01Parliament said no. In 2003, Vasile
11:04Stati published a Moldovan-Romanian
11:06dictionary. The head of Moldova's own
11:08Institute of Linguistics, Ion Barbuta,
11:11called it an absurdity serving political
11:14purposes. That same year, Parliament
11:16defined Moldovan and Romanian as two
11:19names for the same language. And all
11:21this time, since independence, schools
11:23taught a subject called Romanian
11:25Language and Literature. In November
11:282008, the International Standards Body
11:31ISO deprecated the separate code for
11:33Moldovan. Not every part of Moldova took
11:36the same road. Remember that strip
11:38across the Nistru? On the 2nd of
11:40November 1990, armed conflict broke out
11:43in Dubasari. The main fighting ran from
11:46March to July 1992. Separatist forces
11:49were backed by elements of Russia's 14th
11:51Army. A ceasefire was signed on the 21st
11:54of July 1992.
11:57It has held. By my count, that's more
11:59than three decades.
12:00Transnistria became de facto
12:02independent. Internationally, it's still
12:04recognized as part of Moldova.
12:07And Moldova wrote neutrality into its
12:09law. Here's the twist. Transnistria
12:11still writes Moldovan in Cyrillic.
12:14It keeps it as an official language
12:16alongside Russian and Ukrainian. So the
12:18same strip where Moldavian was first
12:20declared back in 1924
12:23is where its Cyrillic form survives. The
12:25[snorts] name question went to court. In
12:272013, Moldova's Constitutional Court
12:30ruled that the Declaration of
12:31Independence takes precedence over
12:33Article 13. That gave the name Romanian
12:36official standing. 10 years after that
12:38ruling, in March 2023, Parliament passed
12:41a law to use Romanian in all laws and in
12:44the Constitution.
12:46President Maia Sandu signed it later
12:48that month. Moldova's Academy of
12:50Sciences now calls the official language
12:53Romanian, but a law changes wording.
12:56It doesn't change how people describe
12:58what they speak, and that's where the
12:59census comes in. So does Moldova speak
13:02Russian? Yes, [music] some of it does.
13:04The 2024 census counted 2.40 million
13:08people. Transnistria wasn't included.
13:1111.1% named Russian as their mother
13:13tongue. 15.3%
13:16said it's the language they usually
13:17speak.
13:18That's more people speaking it day to
13:20day than were born into it. In towns and
13:23cities, 26.9%
13:25usually speak Russian. In the capital,
13:28Chișinău, it's 23.2%.
13:30Chișinău is also where Romanian clearly
13:33beats Moldovan as the usual language.
13:3549.1%
13:37to 26.1. Remember where the post-war
13:40settlers went? The cities. And since
13:432014, Russian as a usual language has
13:46risen by 0.7 points. Smaller languages
13:49are here too. Gagauz is the mother
13:51tongue of 3.8%,
13:54Ukrainian of 2.9, but the big number
13:56hasn't moved much. 79.2%
14:00usually speak Romanian under one name or
14:02the other. Now the part that's easy to
14:04get wrong. In 2024, 49.2%
14:08called their mother tongue Moldovan.
14:1131.3% called it Romanian. In 2014, it
14:15was 56.9%
14:17Moldovan, 23.2% Romanian. [music] In
14:202004, 60% said Moldovan and 16.5% said
14:25Romanian. Most of those Moldovan answers
14:28came from rural areas, [music] and among
14:30people in their 20s, the two are now
14:32tied. 88,785
14:36[music] said Romanian. 88,737
14:40said Moldovan. A gap of 48 people.
14:44Linguists treat Moldovan as a name for
14:46the Romanian spoken in Moldova, but many
14:49Moldovans, especially in the
14:50countryside, still call their language
14:52Moldovan. That's identity, not a
14:55mistake. On ethnicity, 76.7%
14:59identified as Moldovan
15:01and 8.0%
15:02as Romanian. [music]
15:04So, back to the question from the
15:05Romania video. Russia and the Soviet
15:08Union ruled this land for 154 years.
15:11They split it, settled it, and deported
15:13tens of thousands from it. [music]
15:15Russian took root, mostly in the cities,
15:17but Moscow never replaced the language.
15:19[music] It renamed it and gave it new
15:21letters,
15:22and those didn't last.
15:24Latin script came back in 1989.
15:27The Declaration of Independence [music]
15:29said Romanian in 1991 and in 2023, so
15:33did the law.
15:34Here's the answer in one sentence.
15:36Moldova still speaks Romanian because
15:39Moscow tried to relabel the language
15:41rather than replace it, and when Soviet
15:43power ended, the label came off. If you
15:45haven't seen it, the Romania video is
15:47right here. It's where this question
15:49started, and next time, another empire,
15:52another border, and another language
15:54that refused to behave the way the map
15:56said it should.
15:57I'll see you there.

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