VASILE BAHNARU, GHEORGHE E. COJOCARU
The ordeal of Romanian Letters East of the Prut under Soviet Domination
Abstract
In this study, the authors describe the destiny of the Romanian language East of the Prut River, in the former Soviet Moldovan autonomous region across the Dniester River (MASSR) and in Bessarabia that fell under the domination of the Soviet Republics after 1940 and 1944. The study outlines the intention of transforming the MASSR into an experimental laboratory for the Bolshevik theses referring to the denationalization of Romanians, deletion of Romanian memory, and the invention of a new language and a new “Moldovan” people, different from the Romanians on the right bank of the Prut River; the results obtained in this field of cultural-linguistic identity deletion were then transplanted also to the Bessarabian, right bank of the Dniester River. The role of some Bessarabian science and culture personalities who, at the 3rd Writers’ Congress in 1965, requested the return to the Latin alphabet in the SSRM is revealed. The authors state that the ideological-propagandistic war entertained in those times with great political enthusiasm by the party leaders in Chişinău against “nationalist and revisionist” Romania and against Romanian “nationalism” in the SSRM has lasted until the fall of the Soviet Union; it is still sustained from many points of view by some revisionist forces from the Republic of Moldova after the fundamental requests of the historical 3rd Writers’ Congress, regarding the Romanian language and its natural alphabet, the Latin one, were turned into reality and became fruitful.
Keywords: Romanian language, Latin alphabet, “Moldovan language,” proletcult, “nationalist tendencies,” ideological-political factor, party leadership, 3rd Writers’ Congress, cultural identity, linguistic unity, maternal language.