New Europe College Regional Program Yearbook 2001-2002

N.E.C. Yearbook 2001-2002
Russian words in the national language. Nonetheless, despite Russification,
the Soviets found it difficult to argue the difference between the two
languages. And despite their relative success in imposing the expression
“Moldovan language”, on August 31 1989, Moldova adopted the Latin
alphabet and in 1991 changed the name of the spoken language from
“Moldovan” to “Romanian”. 45
But, five years later, the second parliament elected in 1994 by free
democratic elections changed the name of the state language back to
“Moldovan”. This was the beginning of a linguistic battle. International
conferences, symposia, and workshops were organized to demonstrate
that the language spoken in Moldova was, in fact, Romanian. Again, it
had been demonstrated, linguistically speaking, that the Moldovan
language did not exist. There was no more discussion and doubt about
the nature of the language spoken in Moldova. This scientific proof,
however, did not convince everybody that that their language was not
Moldovan and was not a different language from Romanian. There is no
simple choice when it comes to naming a language. Choosing one name
over another leads to different behavior: those who believe their language
to be Moldovan would read different newspapers, listen to different radio
stations and watch different TV stations than those believing their language
to be Romanian. Political behavior will, therefore, be different, with, for
example, people voting different political parties accordingly.
3.3 Identification through inventions
Of course, it cannot be said at which point the word “Moldovan”, in
the ethnic and national sense of the word, started to take on meaning,
apart from its use by ideologists. It is difficult to say how peasants identified
themselves in the nineteenth century, whether they were able to identify
themselves in relation to other ethnic groups. Basarabian intellectuals,
students and soldiers in Russia, however, confirm the theories of identity,
and even confirm Gellner’s story of the Ruritanians of Megalomania. 46 A
powerful mechanism of national identification is exposure to difference
or contact with others which shows differences between self and other
groups, intensifying ethnic and national feelings, the feeling of belonging
to “our group”.
In Petrograd in 1917, for example, the Basarabians Ion Inculet and
Panteleimon Erhan founded the Basarabian Society (Societatea
Basarabeanã) with the purpose of instructing propagandists in the spread
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