Why does the country of Moldova exist?

[ladislav]

There is a part of Eastern Europe that a long time ago, had been colonized by the Romans and where people began speaking a Roman language. They were surrounded by Slavic people, but they became local "Latins". They lived in the regions of Transylvania, Valacchia and Moldova controlled by various other colonial powers.


One day, as soon as they could, Transylvania, Valacchia and Moldova joined together and became a country called Romania.
However, there was part of the Moldova area that was under the Russian control. After the formation of the USSR, a Soviet Moldovan republic was formed. And then, 70 years later. USSR fell and that Soviet Moldovan Republic became an independent country.
After having been separated for so long from the western Moldovans which had long since become Romanians, the eastern Moldovans developed their own national identity. There was a plan to join Romania, but it did not pan out.



The national identity was just part of the reason. Joining Romania would mean that their government people would now be demoted from Presidents and Ministers to governors or mayors- or be fired altogether, and Bucharest -appointed officials would be sent over to replace them. No local official would want that.

Moldova is now either the first or the second the poorest country in Europe, but they still don't want to join Romania. For the foreseeable future, it will remain an independent country.

[MatureDJ]

Moldova occupies a region between 2 rivers, the Dnister on the East and another one on the West (The Bug River?), with the Carpathian Mountains all around, and the swamps of Belarus north of it; IOW, it's like a Eurasian toll booth. The 18th Century Russian Empire realized its importance and seized it. After WW1, it was assigned to Romania - which makes sense as it was basically a Romanian region. The Moldovan language was basically Romanian in Cyrillic. Except for the breakaway east side (see below), the Latin alphabet is used, so its language is now Romanian.

In response, Stalin, wanting to lay a future claim to it, organized the thin sliver of land on the east bank of the Dniestr (which is more or less today's breakaway republic of Transdniestr) and a small chunk of the far western side of the then Ukrainian SSR (i.e., today's far west region, with L'viv as the main city was then part of Poland, and previous to that part of Austro-Hungary) and created the Moldavian ASSR as part of Soviet Ukraine; the idea was to claim that Moldova should really be part of the USSR. After WW2, since Stalin had wisely staked its claim, it became the Molodvan SSR, which included today's Transdniestr but not that other small chunk.

As for being "demoted", with Romania in the EU, it would immediately join the EU. And after the Russo-Ukrainian War, the EU will throwing around Euros in that area like crazy.