The Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic,[a] shortened to Moldavian ASSR, was an autonomous republic of the Ukrainian SSR between 12 October 1924 and 2 August 1940, encompassing the modern territory of Transnistria (today de jure in Moldova, but de facto functioning as an independent state; see Transnistria conflict) as well as much of the present-day Podilsk Raion of Ukraine.

The active propagandist of idea in creation of Moldavian autonomy on territory of Ukrainian Transnistria was Russian revolutionary and a native of Bessarabia Grigory Kotovsky (a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee).

[1] On the other hand, Kotovski held that a new republic would spread Communist ideas into neighboring Bessarabia, with a chance that even Romania and the entire Balkans would be revolutionized.

[5] On March 7, 1924, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine recognized a political prudence in creation of autonomy, yet to the final untangling of the question it was decided to return after a careful ascertainment of situation in the region.

[1] Whereas in process of carried work it became clear that statistical data on the number of Moldavians presented by the Kotovsky's commission is inflated compared to official, on 18 April 1924 the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine approved to consider the creation of the autonomy inappropriate.

[6] Accepted on 29 July, the decision of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) contained categorical indication for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine on allocation of the Moldavian population into a special Autonomous republic as part of the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic and obligated it to report already after a month about the course of the relevant work.

[1] The decision about creation of the Autonomous Moldavian Socialist Soviet Republic was accepted by the 8th convocation of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee at its 3rd session on 12 October 1924.

[7] The area was quickly industrialized, and because of the lack of a qualified workforce, a significant migration from other Soviet republics occurred, predominantly Ukrainians and Russians.

In December 1927, Time reported a number of anti-Soviet uprisings among peasants and factory workers in Tiraspol and other cities (Mogilev-Podolskiy, Kamyanets-Podolskiy) of southern Ukrainian SSR.

On 30 October 1930, from an improvised studio in Tiraspol, started broadcasting in Romanian a Soviet radio of 4 kW whose main purpose was the anti-Romanian propaganda to Bessarabia between Prut and Dniester.

The linguist Leonid Madan was assigned the task of establishing a literary standard, based on the Moldavian dialects of Transnistria and Bessarabia, as well as Russian loanwords or Russian-based calque.

In 1937, during the Soviet Great Purge, many[vague] intellectuals in the Moldavian ASSR, accused of being enemies of the people, bourgeois nationalist or Trotskyist, were removed from their positions and repressed, with a large number of them executed.

On June 26, 1940 the Soviet government issued an ultimatum to the Romanian minister in Moscow, demanding Romania to immediately cede Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina.