LIMBA „MOLDOVENEASCĂ” DE LA PROHIBIŢIE LA INSTRUMENT DE RUSIFICARE (1900–1914)

Abstract

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian authorities realized that the rapid Russification of the Romanian ethnics in Bessarabia was impossible only with the elimination of the Romanian language from the public space. Thus, the education officials allowed the editing of a teaching tool designed to help Moldovans from Eastern Moldova learn Russian. The publication of this book was possible under the following conditions: the use of the Russian civil alphabet, for the first time in writing the Romanian language, the reduction of the Romanian lexicon to the Slavic root background, the suppression of Latin terms, and the invention of words if Slavonic equivalents were missing. This approach applied in the context of a national emancipation movement is the ingredients of the Soviet Moldovan experiment applied, firstly, in the Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and, latterly, in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.