The separatist movement in the Donbas region of Ukraine is playing out the way it did in Moldova’s Transnistria. The same issues of national and linguistic identity and fear of cultural marginalisation of Russian minorities stoked the flames of their independence struggle. In both cases, Russia stepped in to arm the pro-Russian vigilante groups, which led to a nasty war and Russian-dominated regions breaking away from their parent country and declaring independence. However, the war in Donbas, bordering Russia, is far more brutal than it was in Transnistria, a thin strip of land bordering southern Ukraine.
Like other Soviet republics, little Moldova, after being tossed around between Russia and Romania for two centuries, was trying its best to form its own national identity. In the 1980s, when Gorbachev introduced the policies of ‘perestroika’ and ‘glasnost’, encouraging decentralisation and political liberalisation, there was an immediate awakening of nationalism amongst ethnic Moldovans.
The Popular Front of Moldova was formed. In 1988, they demanded from the Soviet authorities that Moldovan, not Russian, be declared the state language, and the Latin script, rather than the Russian Cyrillic script, be used. The more radical elements wanted the minorities, mostly Slavs – that is, Russians and Ukrainians – expelled from Moldova.