Moldoveni vs români. Politicile lingvistice și crearea panteonului literar în RSS Moldovenească (1944-1989)
Moldovans vs Romanians. Linguistic policies and the creation of the literary pantheon in the Moldovan SSR (1944-1989)

Summary/Abstract: The annexation of Bessarabia in 1940/1944 and its transformation into a Soviet Republic on August 2, 1940 marked the beginning of an intense process of identity construction, with the purpose of converting the Romanians living in Bessarabia into Soviet “Moldovan” citizens. In this process, in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR), language and literature became key arenas for fierce ideological and identity-based confrontations, being, at the same time, a significant challenge for Soviet authorities, who sought to create a new language and literary pantheon, distinct – and often divergent – from the Romanian tradition. However, in the early 1950s, confronted with issues of cultural and historical legitimacy, the Soviet leadership in the MSSR decided to publish a series of works by classic Romanian authors born in the Romanian part of Moldova (then part of socialist Romania). Added to this, several prominent figures of Romanian culture and literature – previously labelled as representatives of the “bourgeois Moldovan nation” – were rehabilitated. This study examines various aspects of linguistic, literary, and cultural policies in the MSSR between 1944 and 1989, with a focus on the process of denationalisation and Russification, strategies of cultural resistance and the construction of a “Moldovan” identity through the medium of the “Moldovan” language and literature.

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