The language issue in Moldova remains “political dynamite”
The hasty law on the status of the Russian language as a language of interethnic communication, adopted by the Moldovan parliament, does not solve the language problem that has existed in the country for three decades, but only drives it deeper.
The document, which obliges government agencies to provide residents with information, including in Russian, enshrines the right of citizens to study and speak their native language, is essentially declarative, there is no hint in it of granting the Russian language the status of the second state language of the Republic of Moldova or at least the status of an official language .
This was discussed at the online presentation of the historian’s book Petra Shornikova “Mine Clearance Operations”, organized by the Institute for Socio-Political Research and Regional Development. The publication is dedicated to the parliamentary work of the Unity Movement and the Socialist Party of Moldova to eliminate, as the author notes, the “political dynamite” laid down by the “laws of the 13th session” of the Supreme Council of the Moldavian SSR (1989) under civil peace and Moldavian statehood itself.
Petr Shornikov
The book about the struggle of the Russian-speaking population in the Republic of Moldova for their rights, for the status of the language today is especially relevant in connection with recent events - the sudden activation of the PSRM and Igor Dodon, who lost the presidential election, in matters of protecting the rights of Russian speakers.
In 1989, on the wave of nationalism, the leadership of the MSSR, a multinational and mostly bilingual republic, left state status only to the Moldovan language. Moldavian was recognized as identical to the Romanian language and was translated from Cyrillic to Latin script. In 1990, Moldovan schoolchildren began to be taught the history of Romanians.
The author, a participant in the events, writes about how “Unity” defended the right of citizens to freely use their native language in official communication and receive socially significant information in it, for the preservation of the upbringing and education system functioning in Russian.
The balance of political forces in the republic did not allow the Movement to achieve state status for the Russian language and official status for the Ukrainian and Bulgarian languages. Proportional representation of the non-titular population in public administration bodies was not ensured. But social justice and national equality remain values for the majority of the republic’s population, states Pyotr Shornikov.
“On the eve of every parliamentary and presidential election, competing parties and candidates declare their determination to ensure national equality for citizens,” notes the author of the book. – In 2001, the election program of the Party of Communists included an item on giving the Russian language the status of a second state language, and the PCRM won 71 deputy mandates out of 101. However, the promise was not fulfilled, the party lost the support of the electorate and collapsed.
On November 23, 2020, deputies participating in the Socialist Party faction presented to Parliament a project designed to legitimize the function of the Russian language as a language of interethnic communication. However, legislators do not provide for adjustments to Article 7 of the Law “On the Functioning of Languages...”, which is used to form the state apparatus on the principles of monoethnicism. Conducting paperwork is allowed only in the state language. The national-linguistic issue remains unresolved in Moldova.”
Director of ISPIRR Igor Shornikov also says that there is no effective solution to the long-standing problem of the functioning of languages in Moldova.
Igor Shornikov
“It seems that this problem was driven somewhere deep and carefully camouflaged. The offensive against the Russian language resumed in the 2010s. In 2018, the Constitutional Court of Moldova declared the 1989 law obsolete on the grounds that it was adopted during the Soviet era, and, in fact, the problem was on the surface.
After the recent presidential elections, the Socialist Party came up with a number of initiatives, including a new law on the status of the Russian language. In my opinion, he again does not solve the problem and again camouflages it, perhaps even in a worse state, records all the gains of right-wing anti-Russian forces over the past decade. The problem of the functioning of the Russian language in Moldova requires a thorough and guaranteed solution that does not allow the rights of citizens to be impaired on a linguistic basis,” he said.
The expert drew attention to the fact that the right-wing forces in Moldova are afraid of bilingualism like fire. Even the clumsy initiatives of the socialists cause them anger and irritation. The head of the ISPIRR recalled the statements of the vice-chairman of the “DA Platform”, member of parliament Igor Munteanu, who accused the socialists, who developed the bill on the status of the Russian language, of inciting a “new cultural and linguistic war” and intending to destroy “the model of the state created over three decades on the model of a nationally forming state majority.”
“Moldovan politicians say: don’t touch the law that can restore the rights of Russian speakers, otherwise something terrible will happen. The animal fear that Russian-speaking people in Moldova will suddenly be able to gain equal rights with other citizens haunts part of the political elite,” the expert said.
But in a good way, equal rights in multi-ethnic Moldova should be given to at least five languages - Moldavian, Russian, Ukrainian, Gagauz and Bulgarian, says the doctor of history, chairman of the People's Assembly of Gagauzia of the first convocation, director of the Research Center named after. M. Marunevich Peter Pashaly. But in the conditions of the modern Moldovan state, this task seems fantastic.
For example, the Ministry of Education of Moldova appealed in court the local education law adopted by the People's Assembly of Gagauzia in 2016. The document took into account the regional component in education - it expanded the use of the Gagauz language in the educational process. The Supreme Court of Justice in 2018 overturned the adopted law as contrary to the Constitution and national legislation.
“Our deputies were unable to get their bearings in time and defend the interests of the autonomy. We cannot solve this issue alone - the problem of the functioning of languages is becoming acute, we must join forces, defend our interests and go to the end, involving international authorities,” said Petr Pashaly.
Against common sense
During the expert discussion, it was said that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the “bomb” was planted in Moldovan society consciously and often contrary to logic and common sense.
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Chief Researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vyacheslav Grosul was part of a group of experts - philologists and historians - that was sent to Moldova at the beginning of 1989 to study draft language laws that were being prepared.
Having studied all the materials, experts came to the conclusion that laws cannot be passed or, in extreme cases, it is necessary to give two state languages and preserve the Cyrillic alphabet.
“There are no advantages of the Latin alphabet over the Cyrillic alphabet. Moreover, look at how many diacritics have to be used in the Romanian language. Even Romanian philologists, specialists of old times, wrote that the Cyrillic alphabet serves the Romanian language phonetically better than the Latin alphabet. The written Moldovan language was created on the basis of the Cyrillic alphabet, and the Moldovans received the Cyrillic alphabet from the Serbs, just as they received Orthodoxy.
We reported our conclusions to the bureau of the Central Committee of Moldova - I spoke for an hour - and the members of the Central Committee agreed with us and recognized our arguments as fair. In January 1989, the leadership of the Communist Party had not yet gone over to the side of the nationalists. Then the nationalists wrote that the adoption of language laws was delayed for seven months because of our group... After the laws were adopted, the famous strike began - in August 1989, two hundred enterprises in Moldova went on strike.”
As noted by the candidate of historical sciences, professor Nikolay Babilunga, the “mining” that began 30 years ago continues today – this is evident from the statements of new politicians who come to power in Moldova.
“We see how the elected president makes statements about the need to end the peacekeeping operation, which threatens to incite a new war. We see fantastic, crazy Russophobia in the West, which is being imposed on the former republics of the Soviet Union. Political forces are paid from outside and live on this Russophobia in order to prevent the restoration of the unified state that once existed,” the historian said.
Russia: time for pragmatization and rethinking of foreign policy
Russian experts believe that the time has come for Moscow to reconsider its approaches to interaction with states that are in its sphere of interests.
Founder, publisher and editor-in-chief of the international historical magazine "Rusin", senior researcher at the Laboratory of Interdisciplinary Research at Tomsk University Sergey Sulyak believes that the issue with the Russian language in the Republic of Moldova “will still be resolved.”
Those residents of Moldova who communicated and wrote in Russian continue to do so, the position of the Russian language is very strong in Transnistria and Gagauzia, and in addition, Russia is beginning to more support its compatriots and the Russian language, the expert notes.
“I believe that the stronger Russia becomes, the more respect will be given to Russian culture and the Russian language,” he said.
Political scientist, chief editor of the SONAR-2050 project Semen Uralov, commenting on the situation in the Republic of Moldova, noted that in a broad sense, “the Moldavian-Transnistrian-Gagauz - and, by and large, Ukrainian - case” shows that for the new generation of politicians in Russia, a period of rethinking of what is happening on its border is coming.
Now the residents of the border region, be it Chisinau, Tiraspol or Bishkek, states Uralov, are seriously affected by the battle of the Kremlin factions. For example, according to him, in Moldova, “one hand supports an allegedly pro-Russian politician, with the other hand various geshefts are muddled, then one supposedly pro-Russian politician speaks out against a second supposedly pro-Russian politician, and then they undermine each other until criminal cases are opened in Russia.”
“The battle of the Kremlin towers is reflected in the borderlands. But it is important that the trend, in general, is changing and an understanding is coming that Russia is alone in this world and that all the problems of the border region will have to be solved. I believe that a new stage of the world war is already underway, it’s just happening on the periphery - global players with nuclear weapons are afraid to enter into direct confrontation, so the fight is only taking place using proxy forces and hybrid methods.
But it is moving, and the border will move. The last generation of Soviet politicians who still have experience of living in a single country is leaving; it will be replaced by another generation, more pragmatic, devoid of sentimentality. If we look at the special operation to remove, for example, Plahotniuc from Moldova, we will understand that it was a very cynical, pragmatic game for three – in this case, with the Americans and Europeans. Russia is entering a period of pragmatization, and within the framework of this pragmatization, the most adequate regional and state projects will survive,” says Semyon Uralov.
In his opinion, in the Black Sea region “artificially divided between several jurisdictions,” “the most adequate state model – despite all the problems – is Pridnestrovie, and Russia will have to rely on it.”
“This model needs to be adequately talked about – in new forms, in the language of the XNUMXst century generation,” the expert advised.
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