Some aspects of the national identity of the Soviet Moldovan people in the 1960s

Abstract

In the middle of the 1960s, the national regeneration movement became more active among the intellectuals in the Soviet Moldavia. They appealed to the authorities and the public opinion, aiming at expanding the usage of the national majority’s language. Part of this movement also desired to establish closer contacts with contemporary Romanian culture and — in broader context — with the whole Latin world. The Communist Party leadership of the Moldavian Soviet Republic took measures to weaken the cultural infl uence of the neighbouring country and to stop the formation of the Romanian national identity among the population of the Soviet Moldavia. At the same time, the Moldavian Communist Party leaders used the broadening Romanian cultural infl uence as an argument in order to convince Moscow to give additional funds for building an advanced cultural infrastructure that would be capable of resisting the Romanian infl uence. In Moscow, the problem of the Romanian infl uence on Soviet Moldavia was considered in the context of the complicated Soviet-Romanian relations (The sharpest confl ict in the Soviet-Romanian relations took place in August 1968, when Romania radically opposed the invasion to Czechoslovakia).