Please see another comment under the article, with some facts from my memory. I am not a historian or an archive director, but it's the simplest well known evidence in Moldova and Romania...
Vlad, thanks for engaging with Moldova Matters and for your comments on this article about Moldova's history. For context, my interest in Moldova began in 1995 when I spent 2 weeks there in support of Moldovan educators (teachers, administrators). This led to my wife and I and our youngest children living in Moldova from 1996-98; since then we have been back several times for extended visits and continue to have good relationships with many Moldovans. One of my frustrations is that stories about Moldova in American news sources usually include the phrase "poorest country in Europe". While perhaps technically true, it misses the reality of the many good things that are happening in Moldova. I am grateful for statements from the current political leadership emphasizing the importance of working for what is good for the diverse people of Moldova, who are very creative and already have much that that is good (and needed!).
This text represents a variant of nationalist propaganda — distinct in origin from its Soviet counterpart, but methodologically equivalent in its selective use of evidence, suppression of contradictory facts, and subordination of historical complexity to political narrative.
That it is favoured by the Romanian state and the current Moldovan governing party — to which the author, by virtue of his appointment, is institutionally accountable, and from which he may be a direct beneficiary of political loyalty — does not make it history. It is no coincidence that it was published on March 27, the anniversary of the vote itself. This is a political act dressed as historiography.
The author is entitled to his Romanian identity. What is not acceptable is that the Director of the National Archives — an institution whose professional mandate is the custodianship and impartial preservation of historical evidence — should produce, in an official capacity, a document that systematically suppresses inconvenient facts, excludes entire communities and interpretive traditions, and substitutes ethnonationalist mythology for rigorous historical analysis. He is, moreover, the custodian of the very documents that could contradict his thesis. Concentrating archival authority and its interpretation in a single institutional actor, without engaging a single opposing scholarly voice,.not Charles King, Suveică, Cușco, etc.,
is not scholarship....
An archive exists to preserve all evidence, including the inconvenient. It is not an instrument for laundering political narratives.
The claim to represent an organic national will is permanently refuted by the author's own "present": the civil conflict of the 1990s, the emergence of Transnistria, and the deep societal division over identity that persists to this day and manipulated as well by Romania, Russia, political parties, EU, are direct empirical evidence that no such consensus existed in 1918, nor has it existed since....
Underlying all of this is a deeper normative failure. In any society committed to archives methodology, any classical liberal, political science, principles, and to the European values its current government professes, national and personal identity are matters of individual self-determination, not of elite definition or state assignment. Subsidiarity and personal autonomy are not negotiable footnotes. They are the foundation. A historiography that erases them in favour of collective national projects is not good scholarship. It is its opposite.
Some facts, to provide broader context:
- Stefan the Great burned Bucharest
- "Moldovans" with "Ukranians" many times fought against vlahs (romanians)
- Another name of Moldova, wich still is using in turkish talks is "Bogdania" (something like Tsargrad about Stambul, by orthodox)
- Moldova, Chisinau (Kishinew), Bessarabia, Dnestr, Nistru, Orhei, Bendery etc. is not romanian/latin words.
- Orhei and Caușani were capital of Great Horde
- The Moldavian Principality was an independent political subject — not a proto-Romanian province; its subsequent incorporation into the Romanian Kingdom was itself far from a fully democratic process
- The internal tension between Iași-Suceava and Bucharest, between eastern and north-western Romanian elites, is well documented in Romanian intellectual history — and entirely absent here
- Liberation of Bessarabia, Moldova, Romania, and Bulgaria from the Ottomans was achieved step by step, alongside Russia, not against it
- Nothing in the article addresses the Latinisation/Gallizinisation of the Romanian language, the development of the monarchy, or Romania's prolonged dependence on Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian frameworks
- Chișinău in 19 century was the fifth largest city in the Russian Empire — larger than Kyiv;
- Chșinau was built upon three foundational communities: Moldovan, Armenian, and Jewish
- 1856: southern Bessarabia was returned to Moldavian jurisdiction; 1878: reannexed under Great Power pressure — no linear narrative of natural belonging survives this chronology
- The post-1812 and post-1874 territorial status was internationally recognised
- The vote of 1918 March 27 took place under full Romanian military occupation and control of procedures, not in liberal conditions
- the Moldovan Democratic Republic, wich match the natural vision of state in this period of time, unmentioned by the author, (it was dissolved by external force, not because of referendum or revolution)
- The session of March 27 was conducted predominantly in Russian — not a minor nuance;
- The 1918 November vote abolishing all conditions of autonomy: 44 of 125 deputies, convened at night, without quorum, why?
- Marghiloman's own memoirs record that the decision was made in Bucharest, not in Chișinău (he is not one who said it)
- Deputies who voted for union received land grants and other material benefits, and went on to build careers as Romanian ministers, deputies, and senior administrators.
- The author deploys the single case of Balamez to imply freedom of vote — while systematically ignoring number of cases pointing in the opposite direction; this is selective evidence in service of a predetermined conclusion. As well, Ukrainians can share many other opposite cases of Ukrainians in Romania... It is instrumentalisation.
- Fluid, pre-national, localised identity is retrospectively projected as mature Romanian national consciousness
- Census terminology and methodology of any imperial or royal administration must be critically interrogated, not treated as empirical fact in the twenty-first century and equal to the modern survey design.
- Linguistic affinity is not political allegiance, and ethnolinguistic classification does not constitute a title to sovereignty. The equation of Romanian speech with Romanian national identity — and by extension with Romanian territorial legitimacy — is a 19th-century nationalist construction is anachronism, especially to a region whose demographic history systematically predates and contradicts it.
- Ignorance of the demography dynamic and population
- The Bessarabian peasant self-identified as Moldovan and described their language as Moldovan — often were.even within Romanian Moldova itself
- The actual ethnic mosaic of the region, Moldova, Bessarabia — Bulgarians, Gagauz, Turks, Germans, Lipovans, Old Believers, Hungarians, Rusyns, Poles, Cossacks, Greeks, Ukrainians, Hutsuls, Serbs, Jews, Roma, Karaims — is entirely absent from the analysis; the domination of ethnic surnames for "moldovan(romanian)" — Sîrbu, Vlah, Russu, and many others — in Moldova today silently testifies to a complexity the author ignores
- Jewish communities constituted, by official census figures, nearly half of Chișinău's population (maybe higher) and the majority in many smaller towns. Alongside other minorities, they formed internationally integrated communities that connected the region to global markets, intellectual networks, and cultural exchange — making Bessarabia demonstrably more cosmopolitan, economically dynamic, and in many respects more pluralist than much of continent. One that retrospective nationalist framing cannot accommodate, and therefore simply erases.
- autonomy and role of Bulgarian, Gagauz, German, and other communities remain entirely unexamined
- The Moldovan Church under the Russian Patriarchate had substantially greater institutional autonomy than the Romanian Bessarabian Eparchy
- Both churches today are products of soviet-communistic KGB/Securitatea
- There was no significant popular resistance in Moldova to joining the Soviet army against Nazi Germany, but opposite shows number of wars heroes.
- As well, society was welcome for Romanians in 1941.
- Bessarabian agriculture and viticulture, built on Russian markets, were dismantled by Kingdom and new landlords, administration;
- The region was structurally underdeveloped before 1812, before 1918, before 1940 — and remains the poorest in Europe today;
- Romanian interwar economic peripheralisation and provincelisation is absolutely not examined, despite that fact that ofcourse it was some positive dynamics
- Cases of Moldovan and local resentment toward Romanian administrators are documented in Bessarabian sources;
- Russification = colonial oppression; Romanianization = cultural liberation — the asymmetry is the premise, not the conclusion
- "Romanian-speaking" is systematically and uncritically conflated with "Romanian national identity"
- The narrative opens in 1812 — a deliberate chronological choice that excludes everything inconvenient
- The victims of the 1940s deportations and famine are deployed as retroactive proof of 1918 legitimacy — emotional substitution for argument, with no direct logical connection to the events in question
- The Holocaust, under the Antonescu regime is acknowledged in a single paragraph as a regrettable footnote — using here as kind legitimisation of Romanian absorption/capture in 1918?
- Romania was governed by the House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen — a German dynasty with no historical connection to Moldova or to Romania itself — presented here as the natural vector of liberation
I recognize that the article deals with an issue fraught with both complexity and national sentiment. I'm not sure how a list of "facts" like this really adds to the debate - for example, why would "Stefan the Great burned Bucharest" be remotely relevant? In any case, thank you for taking the time to engage with the piece. I can see you're not a subscriber to this newsletter so you clearly spent some time getting here and responding. This article is published under the Perspective section in which I publish op-eds from prominent people in their field. Obviously, not everyone agrees with their perspectives.
It was good to hear Dr. Casu’s views on this topic!
It is really helpful to hear thoughtful, well-written accounts like this from Moldovans...hope Igor is heard and appreciated by his fellow citizens.
It's well-written, but it merely constitutes another form of manipulation of Moldova-region history.
A comment like this should not be made without a clear explanation, i.e., what specifically what is the manipulation
Please see another comment under the article, with some facts from my memory. I am not a historian or an archive director, but it's the simplest well known evidence in Moldova and Romania...
Vlad, thanks for engaging with Moldova Matters and for your comments on this article about Moldova's history. For context, my interest in Moldova began in 1995 when I spent 2 weeks there in support of Moldovan educators (teachers, administrators). This led to my wife and I and our youngest children living in Moldova from 1996-98; since then we have been back several times for extended visits and continue to have good relationships with many Moldovans. One of my frustrations is that stories about Moldova in American news sources usually include the phrase "poorest country in Europe". While perhaps technically true, it misses the reality of the many good things that are happening in Moldova. I am grateful for statements from the current political leadership emphasizing the importance of working for what is good for the diverse people of Moldova, who are very creative and already have much that that is good (and needed!).
This text represents a variant of nationalist propaganda — distinct in origin from its Soviet counterpart, but methodologically equivalent in its selective use of evidence, suppression of contradictory facts, and subordination of historical complexity to political narrative.
That it is favoured by the Romanian state and the current Moldovan governing party — to which the author, by virtue of his appointment, is institutionally accountable, and from which he may be a direct beneficiary of political loyalty — does not make it history. It is no coincidence that it was published on March 27, the anniversary of the vote itself. This is a political act dressed as historiography.
The author is entitled to his Romanian identity. What is not acceptable is that the Director of the National Archives — an institution whose professional mandate is the custodianship and impartial preservation of historical evidence — should produce, in an official capacity, a document that systematically suppresses inconvenient facts, excludes entire communities and interpretive traditions, and substitutes ethnonationalist mythology for rigorous historical analysis. He is, moreover, the custodian of the very documents that could contradict his thesis. Concentrating archival authority and its interpretation in a single institutional actor, without engaging a single opposing scholarly voice,.not Charles King, Suveică, Cușco, etc.,
is not scholarship....
An archive exists to preserve all evidence, including the inconvenient. It is not an instrument for laundering political narratives.
The claim to represent an organic national will is permanently refuted by the author's own "present": the civil conflict of the 1990s, the emergence of Transnistria, and the deep societal division over identity that persists to this day and manipulated as well by Romania, Russia, political parties, EU, are direct empirical evidence that no such consensus existed in 1918, nor has it existed since....
Underlying all of this is a deeper normative failure. In any society committed to archives methodology, any classical liberal, political science, principles, and to the European values its current government professes, national and personal identity are matters of individual self-determination, not of elite definition or state assignment. Subsidiarity and personal autonomy are not negotiable footnotes. They are the foundation. A historiography that erases them in favour of collective national projects is not good scholarship. It is its opposite.
Some facts, to provide broader context:
- Stefan the Great burned Bucharest
- "Moldovans" with "Ukranians" many times fought against vlahs (romanians)
- Another name of Moldova, wich still is using in turkish talks is "Bogdania" (something like Tsargrad about Stambul, by orthodox)
- Moldova, Chisinau (Kishinew), Bessarabia, Dnestr, Nistru, Orhei, Bendery etc. is not romanian/latin words.
- Orhei and Caușani were capital of Great Horde
- The Moldavian Principality was an independent political subject — not a proto-Romanian province; its subsequent incorporation into the Romanian Kingdom was itself far from a fully democratic process
- The internal tension between Iași-Suceava and Bucharest, between eastern and north-western Romanian elites, is well documented in Romanian intellectual history — and entirely absent here
- Liberation of Bessarabia, Moldova, Romania, and Bulgaria from the Ottomans was achieved step by step, alongside Russia, not against it
- Nothing in the article addresses the Latinisation/Gallizinisation of the Romanian language, the development of the monarchy, or Romania's prolonged dependence on Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian frameworks
- Chișinău in 19 century was the fifth largest city in the Russian Empire — larger than Kyiv;
- Chșinau was built upon three foundational communities: Moldovan, Armenian, and Jewish
- 1856: southern Bessarabia was returned to Moldavian jurisdiction; 1878: reannexed under Great Power pressure — no linear narrative of natural belonging survives this chronology
- The post-1812 and post-1874 territorial status was internationally recognised
- The vote of 1918 March 27 took place under full Romanian military occupation and control of procedures, not in liberal conditions
- the Moldovan Democratic Republic, wich match the natural vision of state in this period of time, unmentioned by the author, (it was dissolved by external force, not because of referendum or revolution)
- The session of March 27 was conducted predominantly in Russian — not a minor nuance;
- The 1918 November vote abolishing all conditions of autonomy: 44 of 125 deputies, convened at night, without quorum, why?
- Marghiloman's own memoirs record that the decision was made in Bucharest, not in Chișinău (he is not one who said it)
- Deputies who voted for union received land grants and other material benefits, and went on to build careers as Romanian ministers, deputies, and senior administrators.
- The author deploys the single case of Balamez to imply freedom of vote — while systematically ignoring number of cases pointing in the opposite direction; this is selective evidence in service of a predetermined conclusion. As well, Ukrainians can share many other opposite cases of Ukrainians in Romania... It is instrumentalisation.
- Fluid, pre-national, localised identity is retrospectively projected as mature Romanian national consciousness
- Census terminology and methodology of any imperial or royal administration must be critically interrogated, not treated as empirical fact in the twenty-first century and equal to the modern survey design.
- Linguistic affinity is not political allegiance, and ethnolinguistic classification does not constitute a title to sovereignty. The equation of Romanian speech with Romanian national identity — and by extension with Romanian territorial legitimacy — is a 19th-century nationalist construction is anachronism, especially to a region whose demographic history systematically predates and contradicts it.
- Ignorance of the demography dynamic and population
- The Bessarabian peasant self-identified as Moldovan and described their language as Moldovan — often were.even within Romanian Moldova itself
- The actual ethnic mosaic of the region, Moldova, Bessarabia — Bulgarians, Gagauz, Turks, Germans, Lipovans, Old Believers, Hungarians, Rusyns, Poles, Cossacks, Greeks, Ukrainians, Hutsuls, Serbs, Jews, Roma, Karaims — is entirely absent from the analysis; the domination of ethnic surnames for "moldovan(romanian)" — Sîrbu, Vlah, Russu, and many others — in Moldova today silently testifies to a complexity the author ignores
- Jewish communities constituted, by official census figures, nearly half of Chișinău's population (maybe higher) and the majority in many smaller towns. Alongside other minorities, they formed internationally integrated communities that connected the region to global markets, intellectual networks, and cultural exchange — making Bessarabia demonstrably more cosmopolitan, economically dynamic, and in many respects more pluralist than much of continent. One that retrospective nationalist framing cannot accommodate, and therefore simply erases.
- autonomy and role of Bulgarian, Gagauz, German, and other communities remain entirely unexamined
- The Moldovan Church under the Russian Patriarchate had substantially greater institutional autonomy than the Romanian Bessarabian Eparchy
- Both churches today are products of soviet-communistic KGB/Securitatea
- There was no significant popular resistance in Moldova to joining the Soviet army against Nazi Germany, but opposite shows number of wars heroes.
- As well, society was welcome for Romanians in 1941.
- Bessarabian agriculture and viticulture, built on Russian markets, were dismantled by Kingdom and new landlords, administration;
- The region was structurally underdeveloped before 1812, before 1918, before 1940 — and remains the poorest in Europe today;
- Romanian interwar economic peripheralisation and provincelisation is absolutely not examined, despite that fact that ofcourse it was some positive dynamics
- Cases of Moldovan and local resentment toward Romanian administrators are documented in Bessarabian sources;
- Russification = colonial oppression; Romanianization = cultural liberation — the asymmetry is the premise, not the conclusion
- "Romanian-speaking" is systematically and uncritically conflated with "Romanian national identity"
- The narrative opens in 1812 — a deliberate chronological choice that excludes everything inconvenient
- The victims of the 1940s deportations and famine are deployed as retroactive proof of 1918 legitimacy — emotional substitution for argument, with no direct logical connection to the events in question
- The Holocaust, under the Antonescu regime is acknowledged in a single paragraph as a regrettable footnote — using here as kind legitimisation of Romanian absorption/capture in 1918?
- Romania was governed by the House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen — a German dynasty with no historical connection to Moldova or to Romania itself — presented here as the natural vector of liberation
Hi Vlad,
I recognize that the article deals with an issue fraught with both complexity and national sentiment. I'm not sure how a list of "facts" like this really adds to the debate - for example, why would "Stefan the Great burned Bucharest" be remotely relevant? In any case, thank you for taking the time to engage with the piece. I can see you're not a subscriber to this newsletter so you clearly spent some time getting here and responding. This article is published under the Perspective section in which I publish op-eds from prominent people in their field. Obviously, not everyone agrees with their perspectives.
All the best,
The story is not white and black and much more interesting than any of the political narratives...
Thank you for your project :)