History of Moldova

During this period of time many innovations and advancements were made, including the practice of agriculture, animal husbandry, kiln-fired pottery, weaving, and the formation of large settlements and towns.

The area, stretching from the Dnieper River in the east to the Iron Gate of the Danube in the west (which included the land now in Moldova), had a civilization as highly advanced as anywhere else on Earth during the Neolithic period.

Due to its strategic location on a route between Asia and Europe, Moldova was repeatedly invaded by, among others, the Goths, Huns, Avars, Magyars, Pechenegs, Cumans, and the Mongols.

Stephen III was succeeded by increasingly weaker princes, and in 1538 Moldavia became a vassal of the Ottoman Empire, to which it owed a percentage of the internal revenue, that in time rose to 10%.

Until 1812, the term "Bessarabia" referred to the region between the Danube, Dniester, the Black Sea shores, and the Upper Trajan Wall, slightly larger than what today is called Budjak.

In 1828 however, the conservative tsar Nikolai I abrogated the Settlement and passed a new regulation which endowed the Governor General with supreme power, with the regional council having only advisory functions and meeting twice a year.

[19] After 1812, the newly installed Russian authorities expelled the large Nogai Tatar population of Budjak (Little Tartary),[20] and encouraged the settlement of Moldavians, Wallachians, Bulgarians, Ukrainians and others through various fiscal facilities and exemption from military service.

[40] Under the pressure of the Romanian central government, worried about the growing dissatisfaction with its administration of the region and the strengthening of the autonomist current, the conditions were nominally dropped by the Sfatul Țării in December 1918.

[47] The Bessarabian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed on May 5, 1919, in Odessa as a "Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government in exile" and established on May 11, 1919, in Tiraspol as an autonomous part of Russian SFSR.

The reform was however marred by the small size of the awarded plots, as well as by preferential allotment of land to politicians and administrative personnel who had supported the political goals of the Romanian government.

[57] Under early Soviet rule, deportations of locals to the northern Urals, to Siberia, and Kazakhstan occurred regularly throughout the Stalinist period, with the largest ones on 12–13 June 1941, and 5–6 July 1949, accounting for 19,000 and 35,000 deportees respectively (from MSSR alone).

By the late Soviet period, the urban intelligentsia and government officials were dominated mostly by ethnic Moldovans, while Russians and Ukrainians made up most of the technical and engineering specialists.

[65] During Leonid Brezhnev's 1950–1952 tenure as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Moldavia (CPM), he was ruthless compared to his predecessor Nicolae Coval in putting down numerous resistance groups, and issuing harsh sentences.

[66] During the Operation North, 723 families (2,617 persons) were deported from the Moldavian SSR, on the night of March 31 to April 1, 1951, members of Neoprotestant sects, mostly Jehovah's Witnesses, qualified as religious elements considered a potential danger for the communist regime.

The Popular Front organized a number of large demonstrations, which led to the designation of Moldovan as the official language of the MSSR on August 31, 1989, and a return to the Latin alphabet.

In August 1990, there was a refusal of the increasingly nationalist republican government to grant cultural and territorial autonomy to Gagauzia and Transnistria, two regions populated primarily by ethnic minorities.

In September in Tiraspol, the main city on the east bank of the Dniester River, the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (commonly called Transnistria) followed suit.

The December elections of Stepan Topal and Igor Smirnov as presidents of Gagauzia and Transnistria respectively, and the official dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of the year, had further increased tensions in Moldova.

Winning 49.9% of the vote, the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (reinstituted in 1993 after being outlawed in 1991), gained 71 of the 101 parliament seats, and elected Vladimir Voronin as the country's third president on April 4, 2001.

[81] In March–April 2002, the opposition Christian-Democratic People's Party organized a mass protest in Chișinău against the plans of the government to fulfill its electoral promise and introduce Russian as the second state language along with its compulsory study in schools.

In recent years, negotiations between the Transnistrian and Moldovan leaders have been going on under the mediation of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Russia, and Ukraine; lately observers from the European Union and the United States have become involved, creating a 5+2 format.

The demonstration had spun out of control on April 7 and escalated into a riot when a part of the crowd attacked the presidential offices and broke into the parliament building, looting and setting its interior on fire.

[98] An attempt by the new ruling coalition to amend the constitution of Moldova via a referendum in 2010 in order to enable presidential election by popular vote failed due to lack of turnout.

[125] In response to these shockwaves, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) put a total of €2bn (£1.74bn) into the Moldovan economy and helped it secure gas supplies, a fivefold increase over 2021.

[131] On 31 July, the Moldovan parliament voted in favour of banning the leaders of the dissolved pro-Russian Șor Party – including Ilan Shor – from standing in elections for a period of five years.

"[142] A sustained campaign of cyberwarfare from Russia against Moldova has continued with the war, with "denial-of-service attempts to flood Moldovan government websites with traffic and force them offline.

[147] The World Health Organization has stated that "The Republic of Moldova's authorities and humanitarian entities have demonstrated leadership in responding to the needs of refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine.

[168] Russia's '10 year plan', written in 2021, was leaked to the international press, involved supporting pro-Russian groups, utilizing the Orthodox Church and threatening to cut off supplies of natural gas with the aim to destabilise Moldova.

[169][170] In February 2023 an attempted coup by a series of Russian-backed actors was uncovered involving saboteurs with military training dressed in civilian clothes to stage attacks (including on state buildings), and take hostages.

[175] In a 10 March briefing, United States National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby made public information about Russian efforts to destabilise Moldova obtained by the U.S. Kirby stated the U.S. government believes Russia to be pursuing destabilisation efforts in Moldova with the ultimate goal of replacing the existing Moldovan government with one that would be more friendly to Russian interests.