Worried about the increasing numbers of his fellow countrymen rushing to apply for the Romanian citizenship Vladimir Voronin, the communist president of the Republic of Moldova (ex-Soviet with a majority Romanian-speaking population) is counterattacking: he promised the Romanians from Romania living in the border region of the Romanian historical province of Moldavia they will be granted Moldovan citizenship as a priority.

In an interview to the State Agency in Chisinau, Voronin deplored the fate of the 10 million Romanian citizens from Romanian Moldavia, who are allegedly deprived of the right to freely assert their Moldovan identity. Voronin accused Bucharest of pursuing a policy of cutting down the number of ethnic groups living in Romania. He gives the example of the Republic of Moldova, where Romanians are a distinct ethnic group, recognized by the state. Occasioned by his welcoming with all the honors in the plenary of the Moldovan parliament, of a delegation of the insignificant Community of Moldavians in Romania, Voronin's statements are either ill-intended of completely deprived of any sense of reality.

The Moldovan president is nearly completing his second term in office and seems to be ignorant of the fact the Romanians from the Romanian historical province of Moldavia have never intended to travel to Chisinau but for offering presents to Europe’s poorest population. He also seems to ignore the truth that the historical state of Moldavia founded in 1359 was torn apart in 1812 by the Russians who occupied the territory of today’s Republic of Moldova. Then the Soviets chipped away at historical Moldavia: through the 1940 dictate, they snatched the territory that had been regained by Romania through the great Union of 1918.

Voronin seems to have forgotten that the Romanian language has been dubbed again as the Moldovan language in Chisinau, in a totally unscientific manner, just to account for the existence of a so-called Moldovan nation; he forgot Moldavians just like the Oltenians or the Dobrudjans have declared themselves Romanians, that is speakers of Romanian language. It is hard to say Voronin does not know a bit of history. The communist leader rather seems to like the Soviet historiography, whereby the population of the Republic of Moldova and the Moldavians from Eastern Romania should form a so-called one single ethnic state, a Greater Moldavia”, whose capital might be Chisinau.

This veiled urge to secession can be traced in the communist ideologists’ works who are still firmly seated in their armchairs in the current Moldovan Parliament and who are well-known as out-and-out Romano-phobes. They only continue the Stalinist policy of division and eradication of the Romanian identity of the predominantly Romanian -speaking population in the Republic of Moldova.

President Voronin’s statements, however, have been the hallmark of a new stage of the Anti-Romanian attacks launched from Chisinau. These attacks have a KGB-ish ring to them and in all their complete absurdity stand proof of the deep crisis of the regime, in Europe’s only state in which a Communist Party is still in power.
(Valentin Tigau)