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Soviet Union [USSR] Other Major Nationalities
In addition to the nationalities just described, seven other
nationalities numbered over 1 million people in the 1989 census:
Moldavians, Tatars, Jews, Germans, Chuvash, Bashkirs, and Mordvins.
None of these nationalities fit into the preceding groups of
nationalities, yet each was a significant part of the complex
fabric constituting the multinational Soviet state, either because
of their large population or because of some other critical factor.
Moldavians
Although Moldavians have their own union republic, the
existence of Moldavians as a separate nationality has been
debatable. Soviet authorities consider Moldavians a distinct
nationality. But most Moldavians see themselves as ethnic Romanians
because they do not differ from the population of Romania
linguistically or culturally. They believe that the creation of the
Moldavian Republic and the "artificial" Moldavian nationality was,
from its inception, an attempt to legitimize Soviet political
claims to a portion of Romanian territory.
Ancient Moldavia, a territory that included portions of both
present-day Romania and the Soviet Union's Moldavian Republic, was
part of Scythia. Later, it fell under partial control of the Roman
Empire. As the Roman Empire declined, Moldavia was invaded by
successive waves of barbarians moving into the empire. Between the
tenth and twelfth centuries, part of Moldavia belonged to Kievan
Rus' and later to the principality of Galicia. Between the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, most of Moldavia was a vassal
state of the Tatars. The first independent Moldavian state arose in
the mid-fourteenth century and lasted until the beginning of the
sixteenth century when Moldavia became a vassal state of Turkey. In
the late eighteenth century, Russia attempted to secure control of
Moldavia and finally succeeded in 1812, when the portion of
Moldavia known as Bessarabia was ceded to Russia.
Despite tsarist efforts to Russify Bessarabia by settling large
numbers of Russians, Ukrainians, and Jews there, at the time of the
February Revolution of 1917 most of the inhabitants considered
themselves Romanians. They established the Democratic Moldavian
Republic soon after the onset of the revolution and then joined
with Romania in April 1918.
In 1924 Soviet authorities created the Moldavian Autonomous
Republic for the Romanian-speaking population remaining in the
Soviet Union. But only about 30 percent of the inhabitants of the
newly created autonomous republic were "Moldavians," or Romanian
speaking. The majority of the residents of the republic were
Ukrainians, Jews, or Russians. In 1940 the Soviet Union
reincorporated Bessarabia and, together with the territory of the
Moldavian Autonomous Republic that contained a mostly Romanianspeaking population, formed the Moldavian Republic. In 1944
Romania, under pressure from the Soviet Union, formally recognized
the existence of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. According
to the 1989 census, over 3.3 million Moldavians lived in the Soviet
Union, of whom 83 percent resided in the Moldavian Republic. The
republic, the second smallest of the union republics in area, had
a population of over 4.3 million, of which nearly 2.8 million, or
over 64 percent, were Moldavians. Ukrainians constituted 14 percent
of the population, while Russians made up another 13 percent. Only
the Ukrainian and Russian republics had sizable Romanian-speaking
minorities in their territory.
According to 1989 statistics, 91.6 percent of Moldavians in the
Soviet Union considered Moldavian their first language. Spoken
Moldavian did not differ from the language spoken in Romania;
however, Soviet authorities replaced the traditional Latin alphabet
with the Cyrillic alphabet.
The Moldavians were one of the least urbanized nationalities,
behind only the Kirgiz as the most rural people in the 1970s. In
1986 only 47 percent of the Moldavian Republic's population lived
in urban areas. This represented an increase of 15 percent from
1970, when it was the least urbanized of all the union republics.
The overwhelming majority of Moldavians lived in rural areas, while
Russians in the republic resided mostly in the cities. The largest
city in 1989 was the capital, Kishinev, with a population of
665,000. Two other cities had a population of over 100,000.
In the 1970s, Moldavians were last among the major
nationalities in the number of students in higher education
institutions and the number of scientific workers per thousand. The
Moldavian Republic also consistently ranked last among the union
republics in the number of students in higher education per
thousand.
Moldavian representation in the CPSU as well as in its own
republic has been among the lowest of all the nationalities. In the
1980s, Moldavians were next to last among union republic
nationalities in their share of total party membership. In the
republic, Russians and Ukrainians held a disproportionate number of
seats in the party. Of the nine Moldavian Republic's Central
Committee members elected in 1971, five were Russian, three were
Ukrainian, and one was Moldavian.
Data as of May 1989
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