Managing Intractable Conflicts: Lessons from Moldova and Cyprus

Nested Identities: From History Books to the Emergence of a Post-Conflict Generation in Moldova
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This unsettled conflict of interests between Romania and the USSR determined
the further actions undertaken by the USSR, which had a profound impact on
the population of the present Transnistria. On the 29 th of July 1924, in Moscow,
during a meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee (CC) of the
Communist (Bolshevik) Party of Russia (CPR(b)), there was a debate on the issue
entitled “Concerning the Moldovan SSR” and the following decision was adopted:
“To consider as necessary, . . . first of all, for political reasons, the separation of the
Moldovan population into a special Autonomous Republic within Ukraine and to
propose to the Central Committee of the Communist (Bolshevik) Party of Ukraine
to give the required directives to the concerned Soviet bodies”.
On the 19 th of September 1924, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of
the Communist (Bolshevik) Party of Ukraine debated the “establishment of the
Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR) within the Ukrainian SSR”.
The adopted decision included a comprehensive description of the territory and
boundaries of the envisaged “socialist state entity”, with the capital in the community
at Birzula (since 1936 – at Tiraspol). The decision also pointed out the need for the
“development of the Moldovan language based on the Russian ‘Cyrillic’ alphabet”.
On the 12 th of October 1924, the third Session of the Central Executive Committee
of Ukraine, held in Kharkov, decided in favor of the establishment of the MASSR
within the Soviet Ukraine (USSR). The representatives of the MASSR’s administration
stated that, from an ethnic viewpoint, the population (516.751 people) had the
following structure: Moldovan – 32%; Ukrainian – 38%; Jewish – 11%; Russian –
11%; with representatives from other nationalities – 8%. The Western border of the
new autonomy was set on the Prut and the Danube rivers, not on the Dniester. In the
address to the first Congress of the Soviets of the MASSR (held April 19-23, 1925),
the Government of Ukraine stated that: “The establishment of the MASSR is the result
of the Soviet power’s correct policy and it will have a special impact on the growth of revolutionary
spirit of the people of Romania and the Balkans”.
After the establishment of the MASSR, the official ideology of the USSR described
the respective situation as follows: “After the invasion of imperial Romania in Soviet
Bessarabia, the Moldovan nation was dismembered. Its largest share, living on the territory of
Bessarabia, which remains under the occupation of the invaders, endures a harsh social and national
yoke. But its smaller part, living in the Soviet State, constitutes a socialist nation”.
In order to justify the territorial ambitions of Bessarabia, the promotion of the
moldovanism policy was intensified in the MASSR. Consequently, throughout the