MoldovaEthnic Composition
Figure 16. Estimated Population Distribution of Moldova by Ethnic
Group, 1989
Figure 17. Estimated Population Distribution of Transnistria by
Ethnic Group, 1989
Source: Based on information from Vasile Nedelciuc, The
Republic of Moldova, Chisinau, June 1992, 23.
Figure 18. Ethnic Groups in Moldova
One of Moldova's characteristic traits is its ethnic
diversity. As early as the beginning of the eighteenth
century,
Moldovan prince and scholar Dimitrie Cantemir observed
that he
"didn't believe that there [existed] a single country of
the size
of Moldova in which so many and such diverse peoples
meet."
At the time of the 1989 census, Moldova's total
population
was 4,335,400. The largest nationality in the republic,
ethnic
Romanians, numbered 2,795,000 persons, accounting for 64.5
percent of the population. The other major nationalities
were
Ukrainians, about 600,000 (14 percent); Russians, about
562,000
(13.0 percent); Gagauz, about 153,000 (4 percent);
Bulgarians,
about 88,000 (2 percent); and Jews, about 66,000 (2.0
percent).
There were also smaller but appreciable numbers of
Belarusians,
Poles, Roma (Gypsies), and Germans in the population
(see
fig. 16). In contrast, in Transnistria ethnic Romanians
accounted for
only 40 percent, of the population in 1989, followed by
Ukrainians (28 percent), Russians (25 percent), Bulgarians
(2
percent), and Gagauz (1 percent)
(see
fig. 17).
In the early 1990s, there was significant emigration
from the
republic, primarily from urban areas and primarily by
Romanian
minorities. In 1990 persons emigrating accounted for 6.8
percent
of the population. This figure rose to 10 percent in 1991
before
dropping sharply to 2 percent in 1992.
Ethnic Romanians made up a sizable proportion of the
urban
population in 1989 (about half the population of Chisinau,
for
example), as well as a large proportion of the rural
population
(80 percent), but only 23 percent of the ethnic Romanians
lived
in the republic's ten largest cities. Many had emigrated
to
Romania at the end of World War II, and others had lost
their
lives during the war and in postwar Soviet purges. As a
consequence of industrial growth and the Soviet
government's
policy of diluting and Russifying ethnic Romanians, there
was
significant immigration to the Moldavian SSR by other
nationalities, especially ethnic Russians and Ukrainians.
Unlike ethnic Romanians, ethnic Russians tend to be
urban
dwellers in Moldova; more than 72 percent of them lived in
the
ten largest cities in 1989. Many of them came to the
Moldavian
SSR after it was annexed by the Soviet government in 1940;
more
arrived after World War II. Ostensibly, they came to
alleviate
the Moldavian SSR's postwar labor shortage (although
thousands of
ethnic Romanians were being deported to Central Asia at
the time)
and to fill leadership positions in industry and the
government.
The Russians settled mainly in Chisinau and Bender and in
the
Transnistrian cities of Tiraspol and Dubasari (Dubossary,
in
Russian). Only about 25 percent of Moldova's Russians
lived in
Transnistria in the early 1990s
(see
fig. 18).
Ethnic Ukrainians in Moldova are more evenly
distributed
between rural and urban areas. Forty-seven percent of them
resided in large cities in 1989; others lived in
long-settled
villages dispersed throughout the region, but particularly
in the
north and in Transnistria.
The Gagauz, Turkic-speaking Orthodox Christians (unlike
most
Turks, who are Muslims), are concentrated in rural
southern
Moldova, mainly around the cities of Comrat, Ciadîr-Lunga
(Chadyr-Lunga, in Russian), and Vulcanesti (Vulkaneshty,
in
Russian). Their ethnic origin is complex and still debated
by
scholars, but it is agreed that they migrated to
Bessarabia from
Bulgaria in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries.
Shortly after Moldova declared its sovereignty, in June
1990 the
Gagauz declared their own independent "Gagauz Republic" in
the
southern part of the country. The 1994 constitution
accorded them
a measure of autonomy, and a decree later that year
officially
established Gagauzia (Gagauz-Yeri, in Gagauz).
Ethnic Bulgarians in Moldova live mainly in the
southern part
of the country. Most of them are descendants of
eighteenthcentury settlers who came to the region because of
persecution by
the Turks. Others came to Bessarabia when Imperial Russia
encouraged their emigration in the nineteenth century.
Their
numbers declined from 177,000 when the Moldavian SSR was
formed
in 1940 to 88,000 in the 1989 census.
Although considered a religious affiliation in the
West,
"Jewish" was considered a nationality by Soviet
authorities, even
though Judaism was suppressed as a religion.
Although Jews had lived in Bessarabia and the region of
Moldova for centuries before Empress Catherine II of
Russia
established the Pale of Settlement, Jews in Russia were
restricted to living and traveling solely within the Pale
as of
1792. By the nineteenth century, the Pale included Russian
Poland, Lithuania, Belorussia, most of Ukraine, Crimea,
and
Bessarabia. It was only in the second half of the
nineteenth
century that exceptions were made.
Most of the prolonged military conflict of World War I
and
the Russian Civil War took place in the Pale, inflicting
heavy
losses of life and property on Jews. When it was created
in 1940,
the Moldavian SSR (mainly Chisinau) held more than 200,000
Jews.
However, their numbers plummeted to only several thousand
as a
result of emigration. Their ranks increased again during
the
1960s and 1970s, only to decline afterward, mainly the
result of
emigration.
In general, Jews in independent Moldova were not
discriminated against. But problems in Transnistria (home
to
almost one-quarter of Moldova's Jews) and the anti-Semitic
attitudes of the "Dnestr Republic" authorities prompted
many of
them to think of emigration.
Data as of June 1995
|